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REVOLUTIONS OF RACE 



IN 



ENGLISH HISTORY 



BY 

EOBEKT YAUGHJS", D. D. 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

443 & 445 BROADWAY. 
1860. 






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SFP 7 3 lot 






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PREFACE. 



|~N tins work the reader will not find everything he 
-*^ would expect to find in a publication bearing the 
title of a History of England. But it is intended that 
these pages shall include so much of the past as will suf- 
fice to give Ml presentation and prominence to .the great 
changes in. the history of this country, showing whence 
they have come, what they have been, and whither they 
have tended. My narrative, accordingly, while not de- 
scribed as a History of England, is designed to serve the ^ 
purpose for which all such histories have been profess- •* 
edly written. English history embraces much in com- - 
mon with the history of Europe, together with much 
that has been characteristic of itself; and it is reasonable 
that Englishmen should be more interested in what has 
been special to their country, than in details which might 
have had their place in the history of any one among a 
large family of states. The question to which this work 
is designed to present an answer is — What is it that has 



IV PKEFACE. 



made England to be England ? My object is to conduct 
the reader to satisfactory conclusions in relation to this 
question, by a road much more direct and simple than is 
compatible with the laws to which the historian usually 
conforms himself when writing the general history of a 
nation. Our busy age needs some assistance of this 
nature. 

But while the spirit of our times is sufficiently dis- 
posed to appreciate directness and compression in author- 
ship, it is, I am aware, by no means disposed to accept 
superficiality in the place of thoroughness. I do not 
affect to be unacquainted with what modern writers have 
published on English history ; but it is only due to my- 
self to state, that on no point of importance in relation 
to my object, have I allowed myself to be dependent on 
such authorities. In many instances, when I have con- 
tented myself with citing a modern author, it has not 
been until after an examination of the sources adduced 
in support of his statements. It has been my earnest 
wish that this work should be the result throughout of a 
fair measure of independent research and of independent 
thought. 

The sense in which I use the term ' Revolution ' 
scarcely needs explanation. The word is meant to com- 
prehend the great phases of change in our history, clue 
place being assigned to the great cause in regard to each 
of them. Down to the close of the fourteenth century, 
change among us comes mainly from the conflicts of 
race. Under the Tudors, the great principle of revolu- 



PREFACE. 



tion is religion ; under the Stuarts, that principle gives 
place considerably to the principles of government. The 
first question to be settled was the question of race ; the 
next concerned the national faith ; and the next the fu- 
ture of the English Constitution. Many causes contrib- 
uted to the strength of these leading causes of action, 
but through their respective periods these are felt to be 
leading causes, and the effects which flow from them are 
all more or less impressed by them. In the progress of 
Great Britain since 1688, no single cause has acquired 
the prominence of the causes above mentioned. 

In taking up such a theme as the Revolutions in 
English History, it is probable that no two writers would 
be agreed as to the best method of dealing with it — or 
as to the principle that should determine the selection of 
material, and where to stop. On these points, and on 
many beside, I have to throw myself on the candour of 
the reader. The course I have taken has been chosen 
after the best thought I could bestow on the subject. 
In the further prosecution of my object, I hope to avail 
myself freely of the rich material in the State Paper 
Office, still in manuscript, and which, thanks to the pres- 
ent Master of the Rolls, is becoming more accessible 
every day for the purposes of history. 



Heath Lodge, Uxbeidge, 
1859. 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 

CELTS AND ROMANS 



CHAPTER I. 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 



PAGE 

Prehistoric period, ... 1 


Phoenicia, 




2 


Phoenician history, 




3 


Greek testimony, 




3 


Voyage of Hiinilco, 




4 


Polybius, 




5 


Diodorus — Strabo, 




6 


Britain as described by the 






7 



Ancient British states, . 
Paces of ancient Britain, . 
Caledonians — Picts and 

Scots, 

Question of a Pre-Celtic 

race, 

Physical features of the an 

cient Britons, . 



9 
10 
11 
11 



CHAPTER II. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 



Rome in the time of Ctesar, 


14 


Caractacus in Rome, . 


. 31 


Cajsar's policy in invading 


1 


The Britons not subdued, 


32 


Britain, .... 


15 


Suetonius, .... 


32 


News-vending in ancienl 




Slaughter of tbe Druids, . 


33 


Rome, .... 


15 


Roman oppression, . 


35 


Caesar's preparations, 




16 


Revolt under Boadicea, . 


35 


The landing, 




17 


Massacre of the Romans, 


36 


Submission and revolt, 




18 


Slaughter of tbe Britons, 


39 


Second submission, . 




19 


Julius Agricola, . 


40 


Second invasion, 




20 


The Caledonians, 


41 


Military operations, . 




20 


Battle of Ardoch, 


42 


Cassivelaunus, . 




21 


Conquest completed, 


43 


Departure of Caesar, . 




22 


Adrian and Antoninus, . 


44 


British resistance, 




23 


Commodus — disorder, 


44 


Subsequent progress, 




24 


Campaign — wall of Severus, 


45 


Caligula's expedition, 




25 


The Scots — Carausius, . 


46 


Plautius and Claudius, 




26 


Tbeodosius — Maximus, . 


48 


Plautius and Ostorius, 




28 


Departure of tbe Romans, 


49 


Defeat of the Icenians, 




28 


"Work of the sword in Brit- 




Caractacus and the Silur 




29 




49 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER III. 

EFFECT OF THE ASCENDENCY OF THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN ON 
GOVERNMENT. 



Celtic popular assemblies, 
Kings — Eevenue — The 

Druids, 

Roman government, . 
Roman colonization, . 
Provinces in Britain, 



PAGE 

51 

52 
53 
53 
54 



Colonies — Municipia — Latian 

towns, 55 

The prefect and procurator, .' 56 

Revolution in government, . 57 

Roman force in Britain, . . 59 



CHAPTER IV. 

REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 



British Druidism, ... 60 

Doctrine of the Druids, . . 61 

Sacred groves, .... 62 

Religious rites, .... 63 
The Romans intolerant of 

Druidism, .... 63 

Christianity, .... 64 

Fictions and misconceptions, 65 



Legend of King Lucius, . 
The probable truth, . 
Persecution under Diocletian, 
Council of Aries, 
Pelagius and Celestius, . 
Lupus and Germanicus, 



67 
69 

70 
71 
72 
73 



Summary, 73 



CHAPTER V. 



EFFECT OF THE ROMAN ASCENDENCY ON SOCIAL LIFE. 



Agriculture, 
Clothing — Art, . 
Impediments to British civi 

lization, . 
British earthworks, . 
Roman civilization, . 
Mines — Coals — Metals, 
Roman roads, 
Educated life, 



75 
76 

78 
78 
80 
81 

si 
82 



End of Druidism — Fine arts 

— General culture, 
Roman cities in Britain, . 
Influence of Roman cities, 
Revolution in manners, . 
Cassar on British morals, 
Summary, .... 
Distribution of race, . 



83 
84 
85 
86 
87 
89 
93 



BOOK II. 

SAXONS AND DANES. 



CHAPTER I. 

SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY. 



British authorities, ... 95 
Gildas — Nennius, ... 97 
Scandinavian poetry and tra- 
dition, 98 

Anglo-Saxon writers — Bode, 99 



Saxon Chronicle, . . . 99 
Ancient laws, . . . .100 
Anglo-Norman writers, . . 101 
Authority of the Anglo- 
Norman writers, . . . 102 



CONTENTS. 



IX 



CHAPTER II. 



THE MIGRATION. 



PAGE 

Britain as Je^t by the Romans, 104 
Picts and Scots, .... 104 
Repulsed by the Britons, . 105 
Final departure of the Ro- 
mans, 10G 

Picture of Britain by Gildas, 106 



The Saxons, .... 
Hengist and Horsa, . 
Saxon and British accounts, 
Rise'of the Octarchy, 
British resistance, 
Summary, .... 



PAGH 

107 
109 
110 
111 
112 
112 



CHAPTER III. 

RISE OF TIIE ENGLISH MONARCHY — EGBERT. 



Anglo-Saxon wars, . 
Design of the Saxon invaders, 
Office of Bretwalda, . 
The Heptarchy, . 
Northumbria, 
Mercia, .... 
Offa and Charlemagne, 



114 
115 
115 
117 
118 
119 
120 



Murder of Ethelbert, 
Progress of Wessex, . 
Cedwalla — Ina, . 
Egbert, .... 
Elective monarchy, . 
"Why .continued, . 
Tendencies towards unity, 



121 
122 
122 
124 
125 
125 
126 



CHAPTER IV. 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATnELSTAN. 



"Wessex, Mercia, and Nor- 

thumbria, 128 

Danger from the Danes, . .129 
Descent of the Danes, . . 129 
Causes of the movement, . 130 
Intentions of the Danes, . . 131 
Ragnar Lodbrog, . . .133 
Inguar and Ubbo, . . . 134 
Check at Nottingham, . .135 
Battle of Kesteven, . . .135 
Danish ravages, .... 136 
King Edmund, .... 137 



Danes in "Wessex, . . .137 
Alfred at Reading, . . .138 

Ashdune, 138 

Progress of the Danes, . . 140 
Alfred's retreat, .... 142 
Battle of Ethadune, . . .143 
Treaty with Guthorm, . . 143 
Invasion under Hastings, . 145 
Edward and Athelstan, . . 146 
Battle of Brunanburgh, . . 146 
Athelstan king of England. . 147 



CHAPTER V. 

RISE OF THE DANISH MONARCHY. 



Edmund succeeds Athelstan, 148 
Insurrection, . . . .149 
Edwy— Edgar, .... 149 
Edward the Martyr — Ethel- 
red the Unready, . . . 150 



Massacre of the Danes, . . 151 

Edmund Ironside, . . . 154 

Canute becomes king, . . 156 

Retrospect, 156 

Ancient and modern England, 157 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EFFECT OF THE SAXON AND DANISH CONQUESTS ON THE DISTRIBUTIONS 

OF RACE. 



PAGE 

Diversities of race, . . . 159 
Location of the Britons, . . 161 
The Angles in Northunibria, 1G3 



PAGE 

Location of the Danes, . .164 
Norwegians in Cumberland, . 165 



CHAPTER VII. 

REVOLUTION IN RELIGION IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. 

Religion — its potency, . 

Saxon heathendom, . 

Odin "worship — Other dei- 
ties, 

Story of Balder, .... 

Evil deities — Fates, . 

Worship, 

Summary on Saxon heathen- 
dom, 

Christianity, .... 

Augustine, 

The British bishops, . 

Iona and its missionaries, 

Aidan, 



169 


Work of Scottish mission- 




170 


aries in England, . 


188 




Progress of Christianity, 


189 


171 


The new faith not pure, . 


192 


173 


The old faith and the new, . 


193 


174 


Results from this revolution 




175 


in religion, .... 


194 




Priestly power, .... 


195 


177 


Policv of the clergv, 


196 


179 


Life of Wilfrid, .... 


199 


181 


Odo and St. Dunstan, 


206 


183 


Edwy and Elgiva, . 


209 


186 


Better effects of Christianity, . 


211 


187 


Bede, Biscop, and Aidan, 


213 



CHAPTER VIII. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. 

Feudal relations, 
Landholding, .... 
Confederations of settlers, . 
Local government, . 
Free and the Not-free, . 
Noble by birth and by service, 

The family, 

The tithing and hundred, . 

The wergild, 

The Witanagemote, . 



216 


Shires and people, . 


232 


219 


Different holdings of land, 


232 


220 


Rise of towns, . 


233 


221 


Government in towns, . 


235 


221 


The king, .... 


236 


224 


The king's household, 


237 


226 


Jurors and compurgators, 


237 


227 


Trial by ordeal, . 


238 


229 


Summary of the revolution 


L 


229 


in government, 


239 



CHAPTER IX. 

REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. 



Agriculture, . . . . 241 

Draining and embankments, 242 

Handicraft and foreign trade, 243 

Intellectual life, .... 244 

Music and poetry, . . . 245 



Prose literature, .... 247 
Culture of the Danes, . . 248 
Science in Anglo-Saxon Brit- 
ain, 250 



CHAPTER X. 

CONCLUSION. 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



BOOK III. 

NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 



PAGE 

The Normans, . . . 256 

Northmen in France, . . 257 

Rollo, first duke of Normandy, 258 

William I., Richard I. and II. 259 

Richard III., Rohertthe Devil, 260 

"William the Conqueror, . . 260 

Society in Normandy, . . 261 
Christianity, . . . .262 
Defective civilization of the 

Normans, 263 

Norman legislation and gov- 
ernment, 265 



Origin of chivalry, . 
Character of the Normans, 
Story of Harold's pledgo to 

William, .... 
Death of the Confessor, . 
Landing of William, . 
Tostig and Hardrada, 
Battle of Stamford Bridge 
Harold's limited resources, 
William's proposal, . 
Harold's reply, . 
Battle of Hastings, . 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO PROPERTY. 



Submission of the English, . 279 

William's coronation, . . 279 

His pretensions, .... 280 

Displacement of the Saxons 281 

Distribution of manors, . . 281 



PAGE 

265 
265 

266 

267 
268 
269 
270 
273 
273 
274 
275 



Opinion of Selden and Hale, 283 

Feudal tenures, .... 284 

Knight service and soccage, . 284 
Military power — State of 

towns, 285 



CHAPTER III. 

TTIE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 



Why the battle of Has- 
tings was so decisive, . 

Subsequent resistance, . 

Siege of Exeter, 

State of the north, . 

William's devastation, 

Removal of the Saxon 
clergy, .... 

Anglo-Norman clergy, . 

Agricultural population, . 

Serfs and free tenants, . 

Confederation at Ely, 



286 
287 
287 
288 
289 

291 
292 
293 

294 
295 



Fate of the Alfgars, . 
Here ward, . 
Death of Waltheof, . 
Anglo-Saxon women, 
Last form of resistance, 
Change in English feeling, 
Cumberland outlaws, 
Robin Hood, 
Retrospect, . 
Rise of towns, . 
Lord Macaulay and 
Normans, . 



the 



296 
297 
298 
299 
300 
300 
302 
303 
304 
306 

307 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 



Common law and statute 

law, 309 

Feudalism in England, . . 310 



Feudal incidents, . . 310 

Meeting at Salisbury, . . 311 
Rule of the Conqueror, . . 312, 



XII 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Laws of tlie Confessor, . . 312 

Trial by jury — its origin, . 314 

Jurors and taxation, . . . 316 

Jurors and parliament, . . 317 

King's court — and council, . 318 

Judicial power of the council, 319 

King's relation to the law, . 320 

Itinerant judges, . . . 323 

Growth of popular power, . 323 

Two great principles, . . 325 
Source of authority among 

the Germans, .... 325 



fif- 



Judicial corruption, . 
"Wealth of the Crown, 
Subsidies — tenths and 

teenths, 

Imports and exports, 
Good from the Conquest, 
Distinctions of race much 

effaced, 

Popular liberty, .... 
King John and the barons, . 
Magna Charta, .... 



CHAPTER V. 



TnE CONQUEST IX ITS RELATION TO THE CIIURCn. 



Spiritual courts, 

Transubstantiation, . 

Celibacy of the clergy, 

Lanfranc, 

The married clergy, . 

Anselm, 

His dispute with Rufus, 

Henry I. — Investitures, 

Exemption of monasteries, 



338 
339 
339 
340 
343 
344 
345 
346 
350 



Thomas :\ Becket, 
Constitutions of Clarendon, . 
Policy of the crown, 
Progress of the dispute, . 
Becket's violence and death, 
Popular feeling, .... 
Result of the controversy, . 

Religion, 

Religious persecution, 



CHAPTER VI. 



TnE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 



The Conquest injurious to 

industry, 366 

Improvement — imports, . . 367 

The Cinque ports — the Jews, 368 

Regulations concerning trade, 370 

History of Longbeard, . . 371 

Patronage of learning, . . 376 

Lay schools, .... 377 

Universities, .... 377 



Arab literature, . 
Aristotle, .... 
Anglo-Norman historians, 
Civil and canon law, 
Romance literature, . 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, . 
Norman architecture, 
Retrospect, .... 



PAGB 

326 
328 

329 
329 
330 

331 
331 

332 
335 



351 
355 
356 
357 
360 
360 
361 
361 
365 



381 
381 
382 
383 
385 
387 
390 
391 



BOOK IV. 

ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



CHAPTER I. 

INFLUENCE OF THE WARS OF ENGLAND ON TnE ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 

Edward III.— -Effect of his 



Henry III. — nis wars, . . 394 

Edward I. — A naval victory, 395 

Invasion of France, . . . 397 

Wars of Edward I., . . . 398 



wars, 400 

Henry V. — Issue of wars 
with France, .... 403 



CONTENTS. 



Xlll 



CHAPTER II. 



INDUSTRIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM THE DEATH OF KING JOHN TO THE 
ACCESSION OF IIEXRY IV. 



Progress of industrial power, 

Impeded by piracy, . 

Middle Age navy, 

Naval triumphs, .... 

Trade impeded by legisla- 
tion, 

Prejudice against foreign 
merchants, .... 

Introduction of weavers, 

Merchants of the Staple, 



PAGE 




PAGE 


407 


Companies, 


413 


408 


The English engage in for- 




408 


eign trade, .... 


413 


409 


Agriculture, . . 


414 






416 


410 


Free labour, .... 


416 




Parliament regulates wages, . 


417 


410 


Value of labour in the four- 




411 


teenth century, 


419 


412 




420 



CHAPTER III. 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM TIIE DEATH OF KING JOHN TO 
TnE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. 



The English language, . . 422 

French metrical romance, . 424 

British traditions, . . . 425 

Vision of Piers Plowman, . 427 

Chaucer, 428 

English prose — Maundeville 

— Wycliffe, .... 431 



Occleve and Lydgate, . . 433 
Progress of art, . . . 434 
Comparative rudeness of Mid- 
dle-age life, . . . .436 
The universities, . . . 437 
City life, 437 



CHAPTER IV. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM THE DEATn OF KING JOHN TO THE 
ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. 



Trade and freedom, . . .439 
The king's council, . . . 439 
Representative principle, . 440 
The Great Charter, . . .441 
Its immediate effects, . . 441 
First House of Commons, . 444 
Rising influence of towns, . 445 
Parliaments under Ed- 
ward I., 446 

Hereford and Norfolk, . . 449 
The statute Be Tallagio non 

Concedendo, . . «. . 451 
Political life under Ed- 
ward!, 455 

Edward as a legislator, . . 457 
Parliaments under Ed- 
ward II., 458 

Civil war, 462 

Galveston, 463 



of 



form 



The Spencers — Battle 
Boroughbridge, 

Deposition of the king, 

Edward III.— settled 
of parliament, 

Power of the Commons, . 

Tonnage and poundage, . 

Law of treason, .... 

Liberties gained, 

Historical significance of par- 
liamentary history, 

Condition of the people, 

Free and skilled labour, . 

The English aristocracy not 
a privileged noolcsse, . 

Growth of independence, 

Condition of the suffrage, 

Purveyance grievances, . 

Popular discontent, 



464 
465 

466 
468 
470 
471 

472 

475 
475 
476 

476 

477 
477 
478 
479 



Wat Tyler, 480 



X]V 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM THE DEATH OF KING JOHN TO THE 
ACCESSION OF IIENEY IV. 



PAGE 

Papal power — Its culminat- 
ing point, 483 

The papacy versus the na- 
tional churches, . . . 484 
Peter's pence, .... 485 
King John's tribute, . . . 485 
The custom of provisors, . 486 
Commendams, .... 488 
General Corruptness, . . 488 
Ecclesiastical diplomacy, . 488 
Grostete, . . . " . .490 
The pope's collectors, . . 490 
Resistance, under Edward 

III., 491 

The popes at Avignon, . . 493 

Papal schism, .... 494 

Retrospect, 495 

Laws in revolutions, . . . 495 



Social life in the counties, 
Population of towns, 
The Franciscans, 
Become city missionaries, 
Their benevolence and sue 

cess, 

Become learned, 
Rapid deterioration, . 
Chaucer's pictures of society 
Wycliffe, . . . . 
Proceedings against him, 
Opposes the doctrine of 

transubstantiation, 
His opinions, 
Remonstrance of the Wye 

Unites, .... 
Impolicy of the clergy, . 
Retrospect, .... 



PAGE 

497 
497 
498 
499 

500 
501 
503 
504 
506 
509 

511 
511 

514 
515 
516 



BOOK V. 

LANCASTER AND YORK. 



CHAPTER I. 



TUE REACTION. 



Accession of Henry IV., . 518 

His policy, 519 

Persecution, . . . .519 
Sawtree and Badby, . . 520 
Reforming spirit of the Com- 
mons, 521 

Arundel's constitutions, . . 523 

Lord Cobham, .... 525 



Persecutions under Chiche- 
ley, 

Excesses of the reformers, 

Clergy at fault, . 

Reaction in Oxford, . 

Decline of learning, . 

The aristocracy during the 
Civil war, . . . . 



525 
527 
527 
528 
531 

532 



CHAPTER II. 

THE DAWN. 



English constitution, . . 536 

Friars and the Clergy, . . 537 
The new opinions embraced 

by clergymen, . . . 540 



The people, 541 

Some encouragement of 

learning, 542 

The duke cf Gloucester, . . 543 



CONTENTS. 



XV 



PAGE 

Earl of Worcester, . . . 543 

Earl Eivers, .... 544 

Lord Littleton, . . . . 545 

Sir John Fortescue, . . . 545 

State of science, .... 547 

Printing, 549 

Probabilities of the future, . 550 
Historical function of the 

papal power, .... 550 
Decline of the papal supre- 
macy, 551 

Policy of the pontiffs, . . 552 



PAGE 

Corruption general, . . . 554 
Revival of literature and 

art, 555 

Leo X. — Scepticism in Italy, 557 
Prospects of society on the 

opening of the fifteenth 

century, 558 

Richard III., . . . .560 
Accession of the house of 

Tudor, 560 

Rule of Henry VII., . . . 561 
His ecclesiastical policy, . .562 



BOOK I. 

CELTS AND ROMANS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE EAELY INHABITANTS OF BEITAIN. 

fTVHE man who treads the greensward of Dover Cliff for book i 



& 



-*- the first time, will feel that before him is the passage 
which must have been made by some of the earliest settlers 
in Britain. The white coast of Gaul stretches along in the 
distance, and the track of voyagers in the unknown past 
seems to be still upon those waters. On those waters, too ? 
the dark sides and the floating sails of the multitude of 
ships under the command of Caesar seem to be still visible. 
But in the age of Caesar many centuries must have passed 
since the first rude wicker-boat grazed its oxhide covering 
on our shore and landed the first man. Some hundreds of 
winters must then have come and gone since the first at- 
tempt was made to penetrate our primeval forests, or to 
compass our stagnant marshes. Far back, even then, must 
the day have been when the eye of man — that probably 
half-naked and wondering new-comer — fell for the first time 
on the waters of the Thames and the Humber, the Severn 
and the Mersey. But man comes in his season : and now 
the day will come when the borders of the Thames shall be 
Ho longer a wilderness, and when from the banks of the 
Vol. I.— 1 



Chap. 



2 CELTS AND KOMANS. 

book i. Mersey other sounds shall be heard than those of untamed 

CHAr. 1. . , . i r> 

animals in search ot prey. 

But how soon change by the hand of man began to 
make its appearance in Britain is a point on which we can- 
not speak with exactness. Rude nations do not write his- 
tories, and it is not until they begin to cast off their rude- 
ness that civilized nations begin to write history for them. 
"We know, however, that the merchants of Phoenicia were 
the people to open the first communication between this isl- 
and and distant countries. It is the commercial spirit that 
gives to Britain her place for the first time in history. So 
we were called from our obscurity by the kind of enterprise 
which was to be the source of our ultimate greatness. 
Phoenicia. The s trip of the coast of Syria known to the ancients as 

Phoenicia, did not measure much more than a hundred 
miles in length, and scarcely twenty in breadth. Along the 
inland border of Phoenicia rose the snow-covered mountains 
of Lebanon, with their slopes and ravines darkened here 
and there by their ancient cedars. From those highlands 
roots were sent off as rocky promontories into the sea. The 
coast was thus broken up into a succession of bays, which 
became harbours, and fitting places for fortresses and wall- 
ed cities. The Phoenicians knew well how to use such ad- 
vantages. As the mariner spread his sail in front of the 
city of Aradus, and with a favouring breeze from the land, 
turned the high prow of his vessel towards Egypt, every 
few miles placed him abreast with a new city. Tripolis, 
Berytus, Sidon, Tyre — all rose thus in succession from the 
sea. The land between those cities was studded with cities 
of less importance, and with villages. Everywhere the 
signs of industry were visible, in the culture of the field, of 
the vine, and of the olive. The relation of this chain of cit- 
ies to the countries eastward of them, and westward, was 
for many centuries the same with that of the great cit- 
ies of Italy in the Middle Ages. Phoenicia and Italy had 
their place at about the middle of the civilized world ; and 
both were the means, in their time, of enabling the one half 
of the human family to interchange commodities with the 
other half. 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 3 

The greatness of the Phoenician power dates from a book i. 
thousand years before the age of Augustus. Its prosperity -^4- 
continued unabated during the first half of that interval, history. 
Its ships visited every shore of the known world, and often 
penetrated into the unknown. In those remote times, Phoe- 
nician navigators made their way to Cape Finistere, and 
learnt to strike across the open sea to Britain. In such ad- 
ventures the Cynosure, the last light in the Little Bear, was 
their chosen polestar. The Cynosure beams upon us as 
brightly as ever, but the Phoenician mariner is gone. Great 
military monarchies are bad neighbours to small commer- 
cial states. It is in the nature, also, of such states, that they 
should rely too much on the aid of mercenaries — a danger- 
ous weapon. The tendency of their wealth, too, is ever to- 
wards concentration and oligarchy. In time, the few who 
govern become divided by feuds between their rival houses, 
and the many who are governed become lost to patriotism. 
So weakness within is all that remains to be opposed to 
strength from without. From these causes the soldier pow- 
er prevailed at length in the history of Phoenicia over the 
merchant power. The glory of the past became wholly of 
the past. In modern Tyre the fisherman dries his nets on 
the ruins of ancient palaces.* 

But if Phoenicia was the first to discover the island of Greek testi 
Britain, it is to Greece we owe the first literary notices con- 
cerning it. When Paul preached to the men of Athens on 
Mars Hill, four centuries and a half had passed since 
Herodotus had read his History to the ancestors of the 
same people. That number of years in our own history 

* Xenophon's description of a Phoenician vessel shows that the Phoenicians 
greatly excelled the Greeks as seamen. ' The best and most accurate arrange- 
ment of things I ever saw, was when I went to look at the great Phoenician ship. 
For I saw the greatest quantity of tackling separately disposed in the smallest 
stowage. You know that a ship comes to anchor or gets under way by means of 
many wooden instruments and many ropes, and sails by means of many sails, and 
is armed with many machines against hostile vessels, and carries about with it 
many cooks for the crew, and all the apparatus which men use in a dwelling-house 
for each mess. Beside all this the vessel is filled with cargo, which the owner 
carries for his own profit. And all that I have mentioned lay in not much great- 
er space than will be found in a chamber large enough conveniently to hold ten 
beds. All this too lay in such a way that they did not obstruct one another, so 
that they needed no one to seek them, and there were no knots to untie and 
cause delay, if they were suddenly wanted for use.' — (Economicus. Kenrick's 
Phoenicia, c. vii. 



mony. 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 1. 



would take us back to the days of Hemy Y. and the battle 
of Agincourt. Time does not become less by distance ; 
but, like all other objects, it seems to do so. In the age of 
Herodotus the kings of Rome had all passed away, and the 
patricians and plebs were committed to their great struggle. 
But the historian, while he makes no mention of Rome, 
deems it proper to state that, if he has not spoken concern- 
ing ' the islands called Cassiterides, whence tin is imported,' 
it is because he had ' no certain knowledge of them,' — a 
manner of expression which implies that the things rumored 
at that time concerning the islands so named must have led 
his auditory to expect information on that subject. That 
tin and amber are brought, says the historian, from the 
extreme parts of Europe is unquestionable.* The word 
Cassiterides would have conveyed no meaning to a Briton 
or a Gaul. The word cassiteros for tin, is first found in 
Homer, but it does not appear to have been of Greek origin. 
There is no room to doubt, that in the Scilly Islands, we 
have the remains of the Cassiterides of Herodotus. 

Aristotle flourished a century later than Herodotus. In 
a passage which has been attributed to that philosopher, it 
is said that beyond the Celtae (Gaul) there are ' two very 
large Islands called Britannic, Albion, and Ierne ; ' and 
that near to Britain there are not a few small islands. Aris- 
totle might readily have learnt thus much from the Phoeni- 
cian seamen of his time ; but both the date and the author- 
ship of the work in which this passage is found are doubtful.f 

It was while Aristotle was teaching at Athens, that is, in 
360 b.c, that the Carthaginians sent their great captain 
Himilco into these regions on a voyage of discovery. This 
navigator explored the seas and coasts of Britain, and some 
fragments from the report made by him have reached us. 
These fragments are found in the ancient poem of Festus 
Avienus. Himilco is there made to speak of this island, 
and especially of the point where the sea separates the 
Land's End in Cornwall from the island beyond, in the fol- 
lowing terms : ' Here rises the head of the promontory, in 
olden times named CEstrymnon, and below, the like-named 

* Hist. lib. iii. § 115. f De Mundo, § 3. 



THE EAELY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 5 

bay and isles ; wide they stretch and are rich in metals, tin book i. 
and lead. Here a numerous race of men dwell, endowed — — ' 
with spirit, and with no slight industry, busied all in the 
cares of trade alone. They navigate the sea in their barks, 
built, not of pines or oak, but, strange to say, made of skins 
and leather. Two days long is the voyage thence to the 
Holy Island' (once so called), which lies expanded in the 
sea, the dwelling of the Hibernian race ; at hand lies the 
isle of Albion.'* 

In this passage, notwithstanding some obscure expres- 
sions, there is a clear reference to the Scilly Islands, to 
Mount's Bay, and Mount St. Michael. In our maps, the 
Scilly Islands consist of small dots sprinkled at various dis- 
tances on the sea. Albion, which is still near to those isl- 
ands, was then no doubt much nearer, and the distance to 
Hibernia is not more than eighty miles. The mines of 
that district continue to yield large supplies of tin. It is 
not found anywhere in Britain except in that neighbourhood, 
and in a few places in the adjoining county of Devon. Spain, 
also, is said to have yielded some supplies of this metal ; 
but in the Scilly Islands we see the Cassiterides (the tin isl- 
ands) of Herodotus. 

With the testimony of the Carthaginian admiral we Poiybius. 
must connect that of a Greek general. Between Himilco 
and Polybius there is the lapse of two centuries. Himilco, 
however, is our better guide. But we learn from Polybius 
that many had ' discoursed very largely' in his time about 
the gold and silver mines of Spain, and about ' the Bri- 
tannic Isles and the working of tin ; ' and he accounts it 
necessary to offer a sort of apology for not doing something 
of the same sort himself. His language shows very clearly 
that a century before the Roman invasion, and among those 
who spoke the Greek language, enough was known concern- 
ing Britain to make intelligent men desirous of knowing 
more.f We owe something, accordingly, to Polybius, a 
man who added much of the virtue and wisdom of a sage, 
to the skill and courage of a soldier ; but we owe more to 
that ancient mariner who was the first to survey our coast, 

* Heeren's Ancient Nations. f Hist. lib. iii. c. 57. 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 1. 



Diodorus 

and Strabo. 



to sound our shores, and to become familiar with those Brit- 
ish seas in which so many brave men were to do brave deeds 
in the time to come. 

But among our Greek authorities in relation to ancient 
Britain, we have to mention the historian Diodorus Siculus 
and Strabo the geographer. Both these authors were con- 
temporary with Csesar and Augustus, both were men whose 
lives were given to the production of the works which bore 
their names, and their fragments concerning Britain are 
much more certain and satisfactory than will be found in 
preceding writers. The Britain they describe is not so much 
the Britain of Kent, which Csesar had recently made known 
to them, as the Britain of Cornwall, as previously known to 
Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks. Diodorus regards 
Britain as an island, and has attempted a description of its 
extent and form. The Britons, he writes, ' who dwell near 
that promontory of Britain which is called Belerium (the 
Land's End), are singularly fond of strangers ; and, from 
their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilized in 
their manners. These people obtain tin by skilfully work- 
ing the soil which produces it. The soil being rocky, has 
hard crevices from which they work out the ore, which they 
fuse and reduce to a metal. When they have formed it into 
cubical shapes, they convey it to a certain island lying off 
Britain, named Ictis ; for at the low tides, the intervening 
space being dry land, they carry it thither in great abun- 
dance in waggons.' At low tides, says the historian, the 
places which seemed to be islands become peninsulas. ' Here 
the merchants purchase the tin from the natives, and carry 
it across into Gaul ; whence it is conveyed on horses, through 
the intervening Celtic land, to the people of Massalia, and 
to the city called Narbonne.'* It will be seen that this ac- 
count of the Cornwall Britons agrees substantially with that 
given by Himilco three centuries earlier. 

Strabo writes : ' The Cassiterides are ten in number, 
and lie near each other in the ocean towards the north from 
the haven of Artabri. One of them is a desert, but the 
others are inhabited by men in black cloaks, clad in tunics, 

* Lib. v. c. 21, 22, 38. 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 7 

reaching to the feet, and girt about the breast. Walking book l 

with staves, and bearded like goats, they subsist by their 

cattle, leading for the most part a wandering life. And 
having metals of tin and lead, these and skins they barter 
with the merchants for earthenware, and salt, and brazen 
vessels. Formerly the Phoenicians alone carried on this 
traffic, by Gadeira (Gibraltar), concealing the passage from 
every one : and when the Romans followed a certain ship- 
master, that they might also find the mart, the shipmaster, 
out of jealousy, purposely ran his vessel upon a shoal, and 
leading on those who followed him into the same destruc- 
tion, he himself escaped by means of a fragment of the ship, 
and recovered from the state the value of the cargo he had 
lost.'* Strabo adds, that subsequently the Romans discov- 
ered this passage to Britain, and availed themselves of it, 
though much more circuitous than the journey by land. 
Two writers among the Greeks of Alexandria are cited by 
Diodorus and Strabo as authorities for what they relate con- 
cerning Britain, viz. Eratosthenes and Artemidorus — and 
these authors, no doubt, derived their information from their 
neighbours, the Phoenicians. 

But it is to Roman authorship, beginning with Csesar, Britain as 

describ6<l 

that we are indebted for our earliest knowledge of Britain by the Eo- 
beyond the islands and the coast of Cornwall. From these 
authorities taken together, we learn that half a century be- 
fore the Christian era, Britain was more or less peopled over 
its whole surface. The Celts of Gaul are described by those 
writers as divided into a multitude of nations. Tacitus reck- 
ons them as sixty-four, f Appian raises the number to four 
hundred.:]: Judging from the number of clans which have 
divided the Highlands of Scotland between them down to 
very recent times, it is easy to suppose that the nations, and 
still more the tribes, in Celtic Gaul were very numerous. 
We know that this distinction between nation and tribe ob- 
tained in Britain. The people of Kent in the time of Csesar 

* Lib. ill. c. 5. Some suppose the men seen in ' black cloaks,' and wearing 
long beards, to have been the Druids, not the population generally. But the 
official costume of the Druids was white, not black. 

f Ann. iii. 44. \ Be Bel. Civil, ii. 71. 



CELTS AND ROMANS 



cha? i Dore tllc common name of Cantii, but that general designa- 

tion comprehended at least four tribes, each governed by its 

own prince or chieftain.* 

Of the nations in possession of the British territory south 
of the Clyde and Fortli eighteen centuries since, history 
makes distinct mention of twenty-five. Concerning the 
number of tribes included in these nations our information 
is imperfect. Some of them, as will be supposed, were much 
more populous than others, and covered a larger territory, 
indent It is clear, also, that even among those rude communities 
states. something like a balance-of-power theory was in operation. 
The weak found comparative safety in being allied with the 
strong, and in becoming parties to the rivalries between the 
more powerful. There were great powers and less in the 
Britain of those days, as there have been great powers and 
less in Europe in later times. The Silures, for example, the 
subjects of the well-known Caractacus, who are said to have 
had their origin and centre in the neighbourhood of the 
Wye, included the Ordovices and the Dimetse of North 
"Wales among their allies, and could call their warriors to- 
gether from the whole length of territory between the Usk, 
on the borders of Glamorganshire in the south, and the Dee 
of Cheshire in the north, and from over the breadth of coun- 
try between the Malvern Hills and the "Wrekin in the east, 
and St. George's Channel in the west. The Brigantes were 
a still more powerful people. Their lands measured the 
breadth of the island, from the seaboard of Yorkshire on the 
one side to that of Lancashire on the other. It, in fact, em- 
braced all the northern counties of modern England. The 
Cantii, as before stated, were in possession of Kent. The 
Belgse peopled Hampshire and "Wiltshire. The greater part 
of Middlesex, including London, was in the hands of the 
Trinobantes. The Damnonii are found almost everywhere 
south of the river Ex. Along the east coast, between the 
Thames in the south, and the land of the Brigantes in the 
north, were the Iceni and the Coitanni. The spaces between 
these greater nations were occupied by many smaller, and 



* De Bel. Gal. iii. 1. Ctesar has given the names of the chiefs. 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 9 

the greater nations had become such by gradually absorbing book i. 

many of less magnitude.* 

The question now comes — Of what race were these com- Race of 

J- ancient 

munities % The answer of Caesar is, that those of Kent and Britain, 
its neighbourhood were an immigrant race from Belgic 
Gaul. This he learnt from the Belgians themselves ; and 
their representations were confirmed by what he saw on his 
first and second invasions. One of his pretences for these 
invasions was, the assistance the Britons had rendered to 
their brethren and allies in Gaul, when the latter were in 
arms against the Romans, f It is clear from subsequent au- 
thorities, that the people of the whole island were so far one 
in condition, customs, and language, as to be evidently of 
the same race. If some exception should be made in the 
case of the Picts, who became formidable in the Lowlands 
of Scotland at a later period, and of the Gaels, who have 
been always confined to the Highlands of that country, we 
can only say that we do not regard the difference, even in 
these cases, as amounting to a difference of race. 

If the general statement now made be correct, to know 
the race of the Belgic Gauls in the time of Csesar, is to know 
the race of the British at that time. The common opinion 
is, that the Belgoe were a branch of the great Celtic family 
Nine-tenths of our most competent authorities are of this 
judgment, and nine-tenths of the evidence on the case is 
with them. That the Germans and Celts bordered upon each 
other, and mixed in some degree together upon the territory 
now known as the Low Countries, may be admitted. But 
that circumstance is consistent with the fact that the lan- 
guage of all the known communities of Britain was found 
to be Celtic, and not German. The language of Wales is 
not the language of the Germans ; the Gaelic speech is not 
the speech of that people. Next in importance to the evi- 
dence from identity in language, is the evidence from iden- 
tity in religion. Druidism, so different from Odinism, was 

* Ptolem. viii. 2. Antonin. Itinerary. Baxter's Gloss. Brit. Horsley's 
Britannia Romano, — passim. Tacitus says the subdivisions of the British peo- 
ple, and the consequent jealousies, prevented their acting together, and were 
constantly favourable to the success of the Romans. — Vita Aqric. xii. 

f DeBel. Gal. 



Scots, 



10 CELTS ANT> EOMANS. 

book i. dominant in Britain, and not less so in Celtic Gaul. Caesar, 

Chap. 1. 

indeed, says that the inhabitants of the interior of Britain 

were born in the island, while those on the sea-coast were 
recent settlers. But he does not say to what extent this 
was the case. Nor does he say that the difference was a 
difference of race. Had he taken up such a rumour, or re- 
corded such a conjecture, it could have weighed little 
against the evidence in our possession, 
nets and The Picts — the supposed ancestors of the Lowland Scotch 

— do not make their appearance in history under that name 
before the close of the third century of the present era. 
The controversy in regard to the origin of this name and 
people has been great and very bitter. They have become 
Germans, Scandinavians, Gaels, Britons, or nondescripts, ac- 
cording to the bias of our historians and antiquaries. From 
the remains of their language, as well as from other circum- 
stances, the most reasonable, and now the most general 
opinion is that the Picts were from the common Celtic stock, 
and for the most part Britons. The natives who were not 
disposed to submit to the Boman sway, would naturally 
be drawn together along some comparatively safe border of 
the Koman territory, and would prove troublesome to those 
within it. Ptolemy makes these northern tribes to have 
been seventeen in number.* 

The Gaelic clans of the Highlands were also Celtse. But 
their language, and their geographical position, seem to 
shut us up to one of two conclusions — either that they must 
have come into that part of Britain from Ireland, or that 
they were the remains of an aboriginal race which had been 
forced into those mountain fastnesses, into the Isle of Man, 
and into Ireland itself, by the pressure of subsequent invad- 
ers. There are some difficulties in the way of the latter 
supposition, but evidence, upon the whole, seems to pre- 
ponderate in its favour. The Gaelic tongue is not British. 
Its only affinity is with the Irish. The word Aber, in 
"Welsh, as in old British, denotes the estuary of a river, or 
any outlet of waters. The word Invcr, in Gaelic and Irish, 

* Worsaae's Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. Wilson's Prehistoric An- 
nals of Scotland, 470-473. Latham's Ethnology of the British Isla7ids, c. iv. 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 11 

lias the same meaning* The word Aber is so used, as a book i. 

Chap. 1. 

prefix to names of places, along a line extending from South ' 

Wales to the North of Scotland, marking off a territory to 
the right of that line as pervaded by the British tongue and 
race. The word Inver is commonly used for the same pur- 
pose through the Highlands to the left of that line, be- 
speaking the prevalence there of a tongue and race which 
are rather Irish than British. Thus, while the British 
tongue sounds along from Aberystwith to Aberdeen, the 
Gaelic makes itself heard from Inverary to Inverness.* 

That Britain was in some degree peopled by a pre- Question of 
Celtic race is an opinion familiar to the learned. But the ™ce. 
evidence on which it rests is too fragmentary and uncertain 
to be available for history. There may have been, as our 
Northern antiquaries teach, an age of stone implements, 
and an age of bronze, preceding that age of iron which had 
come in the time of Csesar.f But the line between those 
ages cannot be well defined, and the two former must be 
reckoned pre-historic. The race of the stone period, who 
had so far degenerated from the civilization of those eastern 
lands whence their progenitors had long since migrated, 
must have passed away long before the age of Caesar, 
like the vegetation of their own forests, leaving scarcely a 
trace behind. 

Concerning the physical features of the inhabitants of ^afurefof 
Britain at the commencement of the present era, ancient BrUons! ent 
writers have said but little. The description of the 
trading and peaceful Britons of Cornwall, with their long 
beards, long tunics, and long walking-staves, is manifestly 
a description that must not be deemed applicable to the 
Britons beyond that district. The Britons seen by Csesar, 
though living in a colder latitude than the people of Corn- 
wall, were comparatively naked. They were clad in skins. 
They stained their bodies with woad, covering them with 
purple figures ; a custom not necessarily barbarous, inas- 

* Kemble's Saxons in England, ii. p. 5. la Scotland there are eleven 
names of places commencing with the one prefix, and twelve commencing with 
the other. In Wales there are seven names commencing with aber — not one 
with invcr. — Latham's Ethnology of the British Islands, c. v. 

f Worsaae's Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. 



12 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

book i, much as it has been common among British seamen within 

our own memory. Its design could hardly have been to 

give fierceness to their aspect ; it was the effect rather of a 
rude love of ornament. They wore a moustache, but no 
beard. Their hair fell long upon their shoulders; and 
they were brave and skilful in war. 

Strabo speaks of some Britons seen by him at Rome as 
being taller than the Gauls, but more slightly built ; their 
hair, also, was less yellow; and there was a want of 
symmetry in their lower limbs. There were no men in 
Rome so tall by half a foot.* It is possible, however, that 
these men were seen in procession ; and if so, they would 
be picked men, and not a fair sample of their race. 

Tacitus says the Britons varied in their physical appear- 
ance. The Caledonians had ruddy hair and large limbs. 
The Silures were more of an olive complexion, and their 
hair mostly dark and curling — suggesting an Iberian origin, 
and something in common perhaps between the proud Cas- 
tilian and the countrymen of Caractacus. The tribes in- 
habiting the present Lowlands of Scotland he describes 
as a fierce people ; the Silures as powerful and brave ; and 
the Britons generally as not incapable of submission if 
mildly treated, but as passionate and uncontrollable under 
oppression. 

Herodian, describing the expedition of the Emperor 
Severus against the Caledonians, writes : ' They know not 
the use of clothing, but encircle their loins and necks with 
iron, deeming this an ornament and an evidence of opulence, 
in like manner as other barbarians esteem gold. They 
puncture their bodies with pictured forms of every sort of 
animals ; on which account they wear no clothing, lest 
they should hide the figures on their bodies. They are a 
most warlike and sanguinary race, carrying only a small 
shield and a spear, and a sword girded to their naked 
bodies.'f If we accept this account as trustworthy, it will 
be clear from the pages of Tacitus and Dion Cassius, that 
the Britons of the south, even in the first century, were 

* Lib. iv. c. 5, § 2. f Lib. iii. c. 24. 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 13 

greatly in advance of the rudeness of the north three cen- cha? i' 

turies later. Boadicea is described as a woman of queenly 

presence. When addressing her men of war, she wore a 
rich golden collar, and a parti-colored floating vest, drawn 
close about her bosom, and over that a thick mantle fasten- 
ed with a clasp. Her hair was of a yellow color, and fell 
in profusion to her waist. 

Such, in brief, were the early inhabitants of Britain. 
More will be said of the state in which the Romans found 
them as we proceed to mark the change introduced by the 
coming in of that new power. Some rough experiences then 
came on the rude communities of this island. For civilized 
men do not often estimate the suffering of the not civilized 
according to a law of humanity. It is deemed enough to 
estimate it according to a law of caste. The blood of the 
rude flows — their hearts are broken — but what of that ? Is 
such blood human — do such hearts really feel ? 



CHAPTER II. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 



book i. TT7HEN" Caesar meditated the invasion of Britain, the great 
„ — — ' * Roman Republic was not dead, but every new breath 

Rome in the - 1 « 

c™K»r f seemed to betoken the action of a malady that must soon 
prove fatal. Marius, Sulla, and Catiline had done their 
work, and their history had revealed the general corrup- 
tion of their times. Faction had come into the place of pa- 
triotism. Selfishness had consumed public spirit. All that 
men like Cato and Cicero could do, in the face of the ene- 
mies of the commonwealth, was to break the force of a fall 
which had become inevitable. Laws which had been just 
and wise so long as the citizens to be governed by them 
were virtuous and few, were made to subserve all evil pur- 
poses now that the citizens had become to the last degree 
unprincipled, and had grown to be almost innumerable. 
The province of government had been restricted to the nar- 
rowest limits, that good men might be secured against 
oppression. But the time had come in which bad men 
abused the liberty which good men had known how to use. 
Nowhere was it more needed than in Rome that the govern- 
ment should be strong ; but nowhere was a government of 
that nature more impracticable on the basis of existing law. 
Rome had become a den of desperate gamesters, and the 
winnings which the chances of the game were to distribute 
consisted of the plunder to be obtained from the world-wide 
provinces which the armies of the republic had subdued. 
Time was, when men in Rome cared about guarding the 
public honour, and augmenting the public virtue ; but the 
great care had now come to be how to appropriate public 
functions, as means of access to the public wealth. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 15 

]STo man knew better than Caesar that when a republic book i. 
lias passed into such a state its days are numbered. It ^^-' 
deserves to perish, and it will assuredly perish. It has lost iic7in S tnT 
the power of self-government, it needs a master, and it is Britain. 
the law of Providence in such cases that the master shall 
come. But who was to be this presiding spirit? Cgesar 
judged, and judged rightly, that he was himself more compe- 
tent than any other man to seize that position, and to hold 
it. But it became him to move with caution. If he had 
no equal, he had competitors : these must be dealt with, and 
affairs must otherwise be ripened for the catastrophe. 
Cresar must add to his power by adding to his celebrity ; 
and he must weaken the government still more, by giving 
more strength to the factions which preyed upon it. It 
was this policy that had disposed him to extend the war in 
Gaul into Germany, and that suggested the importance of 
annexing Britain to the territories of the republic. Every 
such achievement was estimated according to its value as 
capital in the hands of skilful instruments in Rome. Csesar, 
accordingly, was not only careful to do great things, but 
careful also to secure that due reports should be made of 
them in all useful connections by men at his service. 
His successes in his late campaign had been emblazoned 
among all parties in the capital by such means. His inva- 
sion of Britain — a land known in Home more from fable 
than from history — was an event which admitted still more 
of a colouring from the marvellous. For whether Britain 
was really an island, or part of another continent, was a 
question left to be determined by Agricola a century and a 
half later.* 

"We scarcely know how to conceive of the news-vending Newsvend- 

* • • • • t ing in 

ot a great city in which there were no printing-presses and Rome. 
no newspapers. But where there is little reading we may 
be sure there will be much talking. In the absence of jour- 
nalism men had their expedients for doing what is now 
done by that means. The baths of Rome were the clubs of 

* Tacit. Vita Agric. § 10. ' First under Agricola, and now under Severus it 
has been clearly proved to be an island.' — Dion Cassius, lib. xxxix. § 51. Xiphi- 
lin. lib. Ixvi. § 20. 



16 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 2. 



Caesar's pre- 
parations. 



those days and the centres of every sort of association. 
Many of their departments were open to all comers, and 
were filled with idlers. Not only in such places, but with 
the crowds which followed some patrician to his home, or 
gathered at the corner- of almost every street, in every 
saloon, in every supper-party, in every gathering of per- 
sons, from the highest to the lowest, the man with the latest 
news never failed of an eager welcome. As the plot thick- 
ened, the agents of Caesar became more numerous : they 
spread themselves into all public and private relations ; and 
the final blow to the expiring liberties of the commonwealth 
was struck by their hand. Such was the policy of Caesar 
when he resolved on the enterprise which has associated his 
name with the early history of Britain. 

Caesar had brought his campaign in Gaul to a close. 
He had taught the Germans to respect the authority of 
Rome ; and, though the season was far advanced, he flattered 
himself that he might do something in Britain which would 
be favourable to the object of his ambition. From the 
country of the Morini, between Calais and Boulogne, he 
saw the white coast of the unexplored land — the great cape- 
land, as many supposed, of some new world. Merchants in 
constant intercourse with Britain were interrogated concern- 
ing the country and its inhabitants. But the traders were 
more disposed to befriend their customers than to further 
the projects of the military aspirant who pressed them witli 
such questions. An officer was sent to explore the coast. 
But appearances were such that he did not venture to land. 
Meanwhile vessels were collected in great numbers from all 
parts. The intention of the Roman general was no secret 
among the Gauls. Every sail, and every boat, that crossed 
the Channel gave new warning to the Britons. Conferences 
took place in regard to the course best to be taken. Caesar 
relates that, as the result of these deliberations, a messenger 
was sent to him stating that the Britons were not indisposed 
to place themselves under Roman protection. But the rep- 
resentative authority of this messenger must have been 
very limited. The reception given to Caesar, when attempt- 
ing to land on the British shore, was not the reception to 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWOED. 17 

have been expected from a people prepared to submit book i. 
without a struggle to the yoke of an invader. — -" 

The haven of "Wissen, a little to the south of Calais, is The em- 
the point from which Caesar is supposed to have embarked, and P as- 
The ships containing the infantry, besides galleys for the 
officers, were eighty in number. The cavalry had been left 
to embark at Boulogne, in vessels which had been detained 
at that place by unfavourable winds. The shipping at 
Wissen, with their two legions of infantry, put to sea about 
ten at night, and made their appearance on the British coast 
about the same hour the next morning. The islanders had 
been vigilant. They were not taken by surprise. The 
high lands about Dover and the green slopes descending to 
the sea, were covered with armed multitudes, mostly on foot, 
but many in war-chariots. Everywhere there was move- 
ment, and shouts from a great sea of voices, which promised 
no friendly greeting to the strangers. 

To land on a steep shore in the face of such assailants The laud- 
is felt to be impossible. The ships, accordingly, are seen ing ' 
moving along the coast northward, in search of a more 
convenient inlet. After sailing some seven or eight miles, 
they come to a level and open space, near where the town 
of Deal now stands ; and there the prows of the vessels are 
turned towards the beach, and landing is to be attempted. 
But the natives have moved upon the land side by side with 
the enemy upon the sea, and are prepared to meet him as 
before. Horsemen and footmen are there in great numbers. 
They rush down to the edge of the waters. Many advance 
into the sea, challenging the veterans to descend from their 
ships. But the surf runs high, and the soldiers hesitate to 
commit themselves to such uncertain footing in the face of 
so bold an enemy. For some time fortune seems to be on 
' the side of the Britons. The military resources at the com- 
mand of the Romans appear to be exhausted. Something 
needed to be done to check the audacity of the barbarians, 
and to compel a portion of them at least to retire to a 
greater distance. For this purpose several of the lighter 
vessels are made to run upon the shore, and from their 
lofty prows, which serve the purpose of towers, archers and 
Vol. I.— 2 



18 CELTS AND EOMANS. 

book i. dingers do much execution upon the natives, thinning their 
— '-' numbers, and diminishing their ardour. Still the soldiers 
seem to distrust their ability to reach the land — and it is be- 
coming doubtful whether the legions may not be compelled 
to leave the coast of Britain baffled, and virtually defeated. 
At this juncture a standard-bearer rushes into the water, 
and raising aloft the Roman eagle, calls on all who do not 
mean to see that symbol of the power of Eome pass into 
the hands of the enemy to follow him and protect it. 
Many soldiers now leap without orders from the ships, 
and forming themselves into ranks as they best can, they 
press quickly and steadily, with shield and sword, upon the 
Britons. The beach is soon cleared, soldiers hasten from all 
the ships to the land, and the discipline of the Romans pre- 
vails over the untaught daring opposed to them. 
submission The want of concert and unity, evils especially incident 

and revolt. . J . . r J 

to small and uncivilized communities, prevented any rally- 
ing of the forces of the Britons after this discomfiture. In a 
few days the nearest tribes consented to send hostages. But 
while negotiations were in progress, the second division of 
ships, with the cavalry, after appearing in sight, was sud- 
denly dispersed by a storm. The shipping, too, in which 
the infantry had crossed, was so injured by the foul weather, 
and by the influx of a high tide, for which the invaders, 
in their ignorance of the coast, were not prepared, as to 
leave the soldiers who had landed without the means of re- 
turn, should disaster render such a course expedient. In 
these altered circumstances the Britons withdrew secretly 
from the camp ; the people everywhere removed their cattle 
and substance ; and a vigorous attempt was made to ensure 
the departure of the enemy by leaving them without the 
means of subsistence. 
British Cossar found his foragers everywhere beset and inter- ' 

war-enar- ° ^ 

M - cepted. They were safe only as protected by a considerable 

force. In these excursions the Romans felt the want of 
their cavalry, and the war-chariots of the natives greatly 
disconcerted them. These chariots had scythes fastened to 
the axle. The warriors who manned them threw themselves 
upon the ranks of the enemy, and added destruction with 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 19 

the spear and the sword to that inflicted by the scythe, book i. 
Nothing could exceed their skill and courage in the manage- — '-' 
ment of these machines. They guided their horses with 
much dexterity, and leaped from the car to the ground, and 
from the ground to the car, with surprising rapidity. The 
commander of the chariot held the reins, and the one or 
more who rode with him did his bidding — much as we now 
see represented in the reliefs on the walls of Thebes and 
Nineveh. But a few destructive onsets sufficed to put the 
Romans on their guard ; and as they never came to close 
fighting without being victors, the Britons soon became 
sensible that the invaders had resources at command which 
they could not hope to overcome. 

Overtures for peace were renewed and hostages prom- The second 
ised. Caesar, though he had proved equal to the exigencies 
which had surrounded him, was not insensible to his dan- 
ger. He listened gladly to the proposals made to him, and 
embarked at once for the coast of Gaul, leaving the Britons 
to send the promised hostages after him. 

The best that could be made of the doubtful fortune Rejoicings 
which attended this enterprise was made of it in the reports n 
sent to Rome. Fictions of all sorts were there clustered 
about it by those who expected to profit by such inventions. 
The Senate was convened to deliberate on the tidings, and a 
festival of twenty days was decreed in honour of an event 
which had so signally enlarged the territories of the state, 
and which promised to raise even the rude people of Britain 
to a place among civilized nations. Of this event, says Dion 
Cassius, Caesar himself spoke in lofty terms, and the Romans 
at home entertained a wonderfully high o23inion. 

But Caesar well knew that the work said to have been 
accomplished in Britain was still to be done. It was well 
that the most should be made of this first attempt. But if 
not followed by something more decisive, neither the for- 
tunes of the general, nor the military reputation of the le- 
gions, would be found to have gained much by the experi- 
ment to Avhich they had committed themselves. 

Before leaving Gaul for the winter, Caesar had assigned 
to his army its occupation during that interval, and had 



20 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



BOOK I. 

Chap. 2. 

Second in- 
vasion — 
Embarka- 
tion and 
oassaee. 



Cfesar's mi- 
litary ope- 
rations. 



given special instruction that a larger number of transports 
and galleys than had been recently brought together should 
be placed at his service without delay. On his return 
from Italy in the spring, he found that the different harbours 
between Ostend and Boulogne were prepared to supply him 
with more than six hundred vessels, besides twenty-eight 
galleys. These transports had been all built for the occa- 
sion. They were now launched, and concentrated on the 
point where the five legions destined for this second inva- 
sion of Britain had been assembled. But during the first 
five-and-twenty days the wind continued to blow from the 
north. Towards sunset on the first day of favourable weather 
this multitude of vessels put to sea, darkening its surface 
for some miles in breadth and distance, as they floated off 
towards Britain. On the break of day they found them- 
selves drifted by the tide, and by a westerly wind, consider- 
ably beyond their intended point of landing. By the return 
of the tide, however, and the help of their oars, they appear 
to have retraced their way to the entrance of Sandwich 
haven, beyond the mouth of the Stour, the spot now known 
as Pegwell Bay. 

The Britons were not ignorant of the preparations which 
were being made during the winter in the harbours along 
the coast of Gaul, and knew the force with which the enemy 
was about to descend upon their shores. Of the hostages 
for which Cresar had stipulated, a few only had been sent ; 
and this failure was alleged as a sufficient reason for a sec- 
ond expedition. To hazard a general engagement with such 
an army was felt by the Britons to be dangerous. In this 
instance, accordingly, no attempt was made to resist the 
lrnding. But the natives had assembled in great numbers, 
and were prepared to watch the movements of the enemy, 
and to avail themselves of every possible advantage against 
him. 

Ca3sar learnt that the Britons had taken their position 
on the shore of a small river — probably the Stour, about 
twelve miles distant. Having made provision for the safety 
of his ships, and left a guard of ten cohorts and three hun- 
dred horse in charge of them, he put his army in motion. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 21 

tinder cover of the night, and by daybreak came upon the book i. 
Britons on the ground they had chosen. The natives with- — -' 
drew to a retreat near at hand, which, in the times of their 
wars with each other, had been fortified by a dyke and 
mound, and further strengthened by a stockade. Csesar 
conducted his assault on this place with much caution ; but 
the Britons had guarded against being surrounded, and after 
keeping the enemy in check for some time they retired, 
without material injury, towards the interior. Csesar pre- 
pared to move in the same direction. But a messenger now 
came w T ith tidings that a storm had separated the ships from 
their anchors, and dashed them against each other, many 
of them being stranded, and wrecked, so as to have become 
useless. Csesar commanded the soldiers to fortify their 
camp, and returned himself under a strong escort to the 
shore. The loss, however, did not prove to be so serious as 
reported. Forty transports were abandoned as worthless, 
but the remainder were put under repair. Every man who 
had followed the trade of a carpenter was taken from the 
ranks to be employed in this service. "Workmen were also 
brought over from Gaul. During the next ten days and 
nights the sounds along the shore near Pegwell Bay were 
those of a busy dockyard. The damages being by that 
time repaired, Csesar, to prevent a recurrence of such mis- 
chief, gave orders that the vessels should be drawn up on 
shore, and that the force left to protect them should strength- 
en its position by raising an entrenchment on the land side 
of their encampment. 

The news of this disaster had given new courage to the cassive- 

, . 1-1-I launus. 

Britons. Hostilities with each other, in which they were 
engaged even at the moment of Csesar's appearance among 
them, were now suspended, and the belligerents agreed to 
act together against the common enemy. The command of 
this combined force was given to a chief known to us by the 
name of Cassivelaunus, who ruled a people occupying a dis- 
trict of Middlesex bordering upon the Thames. His fight- 
ing men consisted of a large body of footmen, besides horse- 
men and charioteers. Cassivelaunus possessed a consider- 
able advantage in his knowledge of the woods and marshes, 



22 CELTS AND KOMANS. 

book l and of the concealed pathways of the country. He hovered 

Chap 2 

— - ' on the march of the Romans, galled them from ambuscades 
and thickets, and assailed them vigorously with his horsemen 
and chariots, often on ground where attacks by such means 
were not to have been expected. But one enterprise of this 
nature brought him into collision with a large body of cav- 
alry on forage, and with a complete legion of infantry fol- 
lowing to sustain it. In this encounter the slaughter of the 
Britons was so great that no second assault on that scale 
was attempted. 

This advantage gained, Csesar ventured further into the 
country. He appears to have crossed the Medway near 
Maidstone, and the Thames at a place called Coway Stakes, 
near Chertsey — a spot were the old river still curves its way 
beautifully, while on the level land the rude forest has given 
place to the rich meadow and the cottage homestead. At 
this point, where alone the river was fordable, the natives 
had driven stakes in the water, and had lined the bank on 
the opposite side with a stockade. The cavalry entered the 
river first, the infantry followed close upon them, and could 
with difficulty keep their chins above the water in their 
passage. But both divisions succeeded in making their way 
to the opposite bank, and the natives were soon forced from 
their defences. 

The war from this time was one of devastation, each 
party striving to cut off all means of subsistence from the 
other. Cassar restored a king whom the Trinobantes, a peo- 
ple inhabiting part of Essex and Suffolk, had deposed. 
Five other communities, with their chiefs, made their sub- 
mission. As a last expedient Cassivelaunus urged the peo- 
ple of Kent to attack the cohorts which Caesar had left on 
the coast, and to endeavour to destroy his ships. But the 
assault, though made with promptitude and vigour, was not 
The final successful. The next event was the submission of Cassive- 

submission .. .. . . i/-n 

-departure launus himselt ; and Ca3sar, who had consumed much more 

of Ctesar. , , , , 

time m this enterprise than comported with his plans, readily 
accepted the promise of tribute from the different peoples 
belonging to the strip of territory he had visited, and taking 
with him hostages for the payment, he returned to Gaul. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWOED. 23 

His chief spoil from this expedition was a large number of book r. 

, • _<i Chap. 2. 

captives. * 

Oar knowledge of what Csesar did in Britain comes mainly Vaine of 
from his own pen. He has not, perhaps, exaggerated his timony— 
own losses. In one view, his policy would not dispose him British 
to underrate the country he had invaded, or the people 
whom he had been at so much pains to subdue. On the 
other hand, it must be remembered that he did not accom- 
plish the work to which he had committed himself, and he 
may have been willing that the region should be judged as 
not worthy of greater effort. His account of Cassivelaunus 
places that chief before us as a man whose genius had raised 
him above his contemporaries. But the jealousy with 
which his power was regarded by his neighbours was fatal 
to the unity which could alone have made resistance success- 
ful. Even the Roman yoke would seem to have been pre- 
ferred by some to the undue ascendency of this native prince. 
They were brave men, however — not a few of these old Brit- 
ons ; magnanimous and unselfish men, in their way, pre- 
pared to hazard every possible loss, rather than lose their 
rude sense of independence and freedom. It was this feel- 
ing in the past which had made Rome great. But such 
feeling was now almost wholly of the past. The lawlessness 
of the republic was about to give place to the order of a 
military despotism : and during the next hundred years 
Rome is so much occupied in a struggle to conserve weighty 
interests nearer home, as to be little inclined to engage 
in an enterprise so costly as would be necessary to ensure 
the conquest of Britain. Augustus, indeed, threatened 
something of this nature more than once. The tribute im- 
posed by Csesar was rarely paid, and his successor was wise 
in not attempting to enforce the payment. Augustus con- 

* Of the importance attached to this alleged conquest of Britain by Ca?sar 
and the Romans, we may judge from the following passages in Dion Cassius : ' To 
what purpose (said Cassar) have I so long possessed the proconsular power, if I 
am to be enslaved to any of you, or vanquished by any of you here in Italy, and 
close to Rome — I, by whom you have subdued the Gauls and conquered the Brit- 
ons' (lib. xli. § 34). ' But here, within these walls, he (Cajsar) perished by con- 
spiracy, who had led an army even into Britain in security' (ibid. § 49). ' To be 
trodden underfoot (said Augustus) by an Egyptian woman would be unworthy of 
us, we who have vanquished the Gauls — and passed over to Britain' (lib. 4, 
§24). 



24 



CELTS AND K0MANS. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 2. 



Progress of 
Britain 
daring the 
next cen- 
tury. 



tented himself with levying a tax on British goods imported 
into Gaul and into the Rhine provinces. Tiberius followed 
the example of his predecessor in this respect, and the joint 
reign of these two princes extended to nearly eighty years.* 
During the century which followed the departure of 
Caesar from the shores of Britain, the country appears to 
have made considerable advances. Commercial cities had 
grown up and become nourishing along the whole coast 
from Friesland to the Rhine, especially along the banks of 
that great river. It is evident that the Britons had become 
considerable traders in all those quarters. The site of mod- 
ern London was passed and repassed by Caesar, but nothing 
existed there at that time to attract his attention. He does 
not name it. A hundred years later, Londinum had not 
only come into existence, but had become a place of great 
traffic. The people resident there, were partly foreigners, 
who had settled there for the purposes of trade, and partly 
natives who were disposed to occupy themselves in industri- 
ous callings. The most powerful prince at that time in 
Britain was Cunobeline, the successor of Cassivelaunus as 
king of the Trinobantes. Camulodunum, his capital, stood 
on the ground where Colchester has since stood. Coins 
were struck there in his name, with Latin inscriptions, which 
bespeak considerable progress in art and trade, and a free 
intercourse, not only with Gaul, but with countries more 
remote. Camulodunum • was only one among many cities 
which, with their adjacent towns and villages, covered the 
large territory subject to the sway of Cunobeline. In these 
later times the curious and the idle in Rome were often 
gratified by seeing distinguished persons of both sexes among 
them from this island. In the popular literature of Rome 
mention is often made of Britain, and the mention is of a 
kind to show that the Britons of the time of Claudius must 
have been a very different people from those described by 
Caesar. There is, indeed, room to suspect, that as Caesar 
could not conquer Britain, he had his reasons for conveying 
the impression that it was not really worth conquering. 



Tacitus, Agric. § xiii. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWOKD. 25 

However this may have been, the Britain which did nlti- book i. 
mately submit to the authority of Rome was certainly a — - ' 
country of considerable industry and wealth. If the Britons 
of Caesar's time were wont to delight in human sacrifices, 
to paint or stain their bodies in barbarous fashion, and to 
have the wives of a family in common, nothing of this would 
seem to apply to the Britons described by Tacitus and Dion 
Cassius. This is a fact of importance in relation to our early 
history, and should be marked by the student. 

In the time of Caligula, who succeeded his uncle Malcontent 

• /-n it i • -i -i i • a i • • rm Britons look 

liberms, Cunobelme banished his son Admmius. The t» Bome for 

redress. 

exile threw himself at the feet of the emperor, and affected - 
to surrender the British territory to Roman protection. 
Caligula announced the event to the Senate and to the peo- 
ple as an affair of great moment, and gave orders that 
an army of two hundred thousand men should be at once 
assembled on the coast of Gaul. The army was brought 
together. In its presence the royal galley was rowed off 
with much ceremony into the sea. The emperor then return- 
ed to the land, ascended a lofty throne, and amidst the 
sound of trumpets gave signal to his soldiers as if for an 
engagement. But when the legions inquired for the enemy, caiiguin's 
they were told that they had witnessed the conquest of the 
ocean, and that they were to disperse and gather shells on 
the beach as in token of their triumph ! Such are the men 
who come to be masters over armies and nations when 
armies and nations come to deserve no better. The syco- 
phant Senate decreed to this man the honours of a triumph. 
This was in a. d. 40.* 

We hear no more of Adminius. But three years later a 
British prince named Beric solicited help from the Emperor 
Claudius against his competitors for power in this country. 
It thus seems to have grown into a usage for aggrieved 
parties in Britain to make their appeal to Home ; and it 
was in vain, it seems, that the Britons demanded that such 
malcontents should be delivered up to them. The emperor 
did not want a pretext for the invasion of Britain. The 

* Suetonius, Calig. 46, 47. Dion Cass. lix. § 25. 



26 



CELTS AND KOMANS. 



Invasion 
under Plau< 
tius and 
Claudius. 



book i. non-payment of the tribute was a sufficient plea. Clau- 
^fl_' dius remembered that Caesar's invasion of Britain, futile as 
it was, had contributed not a little to his fame ; and he hoped 
that he might accomplish what that great commander had 
only attempted. But Aulus Plautius, a general of high 
reputation, was chosen to collect the necessary forces, and to 
commence the war. The general found his legions strongly 
opposed to the enterprise. They spoke of the treachery of 
the British coast, and of the difficulties that would arise 
from the nature of the country, and the mode of warfare 
pursued by the people. They became, in fact, mutinous. 
But the emperor insisted on obedience, and after a while 
they returned to their duty. The force embarked consisted 
of four legions, about twenty-five thousand men, besides 
a complement of auxiliaries, probably not less numerous. 
The adverse weather which the armament encountered was 
very much what the veterans had predicted. But the ships 
had been separated into three divisions, as a precaution 
against local disasters; and after some delay landing was 
effected by them all without resistance, apparently at Rich- 
borough, Lymne and Dover. The Britons had heard of the 
mutinous spirit among the soldiers, and had been willing to 
believe that the project would be abandoned. But this false 
confidence was soon at an end. 

The duty of resistance rested mainly with the Trino- 
bantes, who were in the first rank among the Britons of 
the south. Cunobeline, the king of that people, deputed 
the command to his sons Caractacus and Togodumnus. 
The Britons knew the disadvantage that would attend them 
in an open encounter with such an enemy. They con- 
trived to annoy the invaders from the skirts of the forests 
and the marsh, and from the banks of rivers. In this kind 
of warfare the general found his auxiliaries more available 
than his legions. To the astonishment of the natives, the 
Batavian horse swam across a broad river and attacked 
them on the opposite bank. This river we suppose was the 
Thames. If not the Thames, it must have been the Severn, 
and our knowledge on this subject, limited as it is, forbids 
our supposing that Plautius had penetrated so far. In 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 27 

one of these river conflicts, Togodumnus, the British leader, gj°K L 

was slain. On most occasions the advantage seems to have 

been with the Komans. But though much danger had 
been braved, nothing decisive had been done. It was in 
this campaign that Vespasian, the emperor of a later day, 
gave the first proof of his high military genius. In his pur- 
suit of the enemy he was one day so hemmed in that his 
escape seemed to be impossible. But his son Titus, who saw 
his danger, rushed upon his assailants with such ardour that 
they fell in all directions, and his father was saved.* 

Plautius no doubt knew that to acquire distinction in 
this war, whether deservedly or not, would be grateful to 
the emperor. He was to apprise his sovereign if the pos- 
ture of affairs should be such as to require his presence ; 
and his presence was hardly solicited before he was on 
his way towards the army encamped near the Thames. 
The camp was impatient for his arrival. It was a new 
thing for the legions to have an emperor at their head, not 
merely on parade, but in a real war. All were intent on 
some achievement worthy of the occasion. Camulodunum 
itself was the first point of attack. That city consisted of 
a large enclosure including, beside the residence of the chief, 
many of the houses and huts of his people, with space used 
for the shelter of flocks and herds in time of danger. The 
Trinobantes faced the enemy in front of their capital. 
But the issue was against them. Claudius was hailed as 
' imperator ' by the army several times in the space of six- 
teen days, which seems to say that it cost more than one 
struggle to accomplish the fall of so powerful a section of 
the British people. But the subjection was complete. 
Claudius returned to Rome. The Senate not only decreed 
him a triumph, but gave him the name of Britannicus, pro- 
vided that the name should pass from the father to the 
son, instituted annual games in commemoration of the 
event, and reared triumphal arches in Borne and in Gaul.f 

Claudius, on leaving Britain, assigned the territory north 

* Dion Cass. lib. lx. § 30. Suetonius, Claud, xvi.-xxiv. Tacitus, Agric. 
sdii. 

f Dion Cass. lib. lx. § 23. 



28 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

book i. of the Thames to the care of Plautius, and that on the 

Chap 2 

— '- ' south side of the river to Yespasian. But Britain was not 
yet conquered. The natives were still for the greater part 
in arms. Caractacus was not among those who had made 
submission. He ceased not to harass the detachments under 
Plautius. "Whatever loss he sustained seemed to he speedily- 
repaired, and the courage of himself and of his followers 
remained unbroken. During the five years that Plautius 
held command in Britain Caractacus pursued this course 
towards him without intermission. In the south Yespasian 
kept his footing, but with difficulty, and at the cost of fight- 
ing more than thirty battles. 
plautius In a.d. 50, Publius Ostorius was appointed governor of 

by ostorius. Britain. He found the country in a very unsettled state. 
The winter season was approaching. The new general hav- 
ing a new army to command, the Britons presumed that he 
was not likely to commence operations before the spring. 
Filled with this idea, they began ravaging the different 
parts of the island that had submitted to the Roman yoke. 
Ostorius saw that the enemy must be at once made sensible 
that they had a man of promptitude and vigor to deal with. 
He summoned his cohorts, and marched rapidly from place 
to place. The Britons were generally taken by surprise, 
and cut to pieces or dispersed. To secure the advantages 
thus gained, a chain of forts was raised along the banks of 
the Avon and on the Gloucestershire side of the Severn. It 
was hoped that the malcontent feeling among the Britons 
would be shut up by this means within the space beyond 
those rivers. 
Defeat ( But the Icenians, whose country embraced a great part 

icenians. of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, 
and who had not hitherto committed themselves against the 
Romans, now took up arms on the side of their country. 
Some adjacent states joined them, and an undue estimate 
of their strength, so common with uncivilized men, disposed 
them to challenge a decisive action. The spot chosen by 
them was enclosed by a high embankment of earth, leaving 
only one point as an entrance from the level ground. This 
seemed to render the Roman cavalry useless. But Ostorius 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 29 

ordered the men to dismount, and to join with the infantry book i. 
in storming the place. The assault was successful. The — '—' 
Britons, shut in by their own fortifications, and pressed from 
many points, were thrown into disorder. But their courage 
did not fail them. ' They fought to the last,' says Tacitus, 
' and gave signal proofs of heroic bravery.' 

From the country of the Icenians Ostorius marched 
against the disaffected in Cheshire and. Lancashire. But 
Cheshire and Lancashire were very rude and thinly peopled 
districts in those days. The Britons in those parts avoided 
any general engagement. While overrunning those quarters, 
news came that the Brigantes, on the other side of the York- 
shire hills, were in arms. Scarcely had tranquillity been 
restored in that direction, when it was reported that the Si- 
lures had again taken the field. 

The Silures, besides being the bravest, and the most skill- f n a ( i a t c ^ cus 
ed in their own kind of warfare, among the Britons, were Silures - 
filled with confidence at this juncture by the presence of 
Caractacus — a chief whose valour and enterprise had made 
his name familiar to the whole island. ]STo man better knew 
the country, and no man could better avail himself of its 
advantages against an enemy. Having drawn to his stand- 
ard from his own territory, and from other parts, all who 
were most disposed to look on submission to Rome as servi- 
tude, he resolved to place his fortune on the issue of a bat- 
tle. The spot chosen by him is supposed to have been near 
the hill called Caer-Caradoc, in Shropshire, where the wa- 
ters of the Clune and the Tame join. The slopes descend- 
ing from this position were rough and steep, and it was pro- 
tected in other parts by a rampart formed of huge stones, 
while the land below was bordered by a river, not formida- 
ble, but in places of uncertain footing. Between the moun- 
tain fortress and the river, Caractacus disposed his warriors 
in the order of battle. The chiefs were seen busy in mar- 
shalling their followers. All did what they could to banish 
the idea of fear, and to stimulate their men to the utmost. 
Caractacus himself was in every part of the field, and his 
brave words, as he flew from rank to rank, called forth 
shouts of applause. All bound themselves by a solemn oath 



30 



CELTS AKD ROMANS. 



to prefer death to slavery. The sight was not a little men- 
acing. Ostorius looked at it with misgiving. First he saw 
a river to be forded ; then a stockade to be forced ; then a 
steep and craggy hill-side to be surmounted ; and last, a suc- 
cession of rude forts to be taken, which the fierce multitude 
before him were prepared to defend to the utmost. But 
the Roman soldiers did not share in the manifest hesitancy 
of their general — they showed themselves impatient for the 
onset. Valour can do all things, was their cry, and the 
officers joined in the cry of their men. Let it so be, was the 
answer of Ostorius. The general looked carefully to the 
ground, and having marked the weaker points of the enemy, 
gave the signal for battle. The river was soon crossed, and 
the Romans made their way to the parapet. But there the 
missive weapons of the natives fell like hail upon their as- 
sailants, and the advantage was with the Britons. Checked 
thus formidably, Ostorius ordered his men to advance under 
a military shell — a sort of roofing over their persons formed 
by conjoining their shields. Under this covering they once 
more approached the parapet, and succeeded in levelling 
the loose and massive stones which had served the Britons 
as an elevated breastwork. The Britons retreated in some 
disorder to the summit of the hill ; the Romans pressed 
eagerly upon them under a destructive shower of darts. In 
the hand-to-hand struggle which ensued matters were not 
equal. ~No helmet covered the head of the Briton, no coat 
of mail protected his breast. The swords and javelins of 
the legions, and the sabres and spears of the auxiliaries 
proved irresistible. The slaughter which followed was great, 
and the issue was decisive. Among the captives were the 
brother, the daughter, and the wife of Caractacus. The bat- 
tle of Caer-Caradoc was to the Britons what the battle of 
Hastings became to the Anglo-Saxons. If there was a dif- 
ference, it consisted mainly in the fact that the struggle of 
the Britons in defence of their freedom before that day, and 
their efforts to recover it when really lost, were greater than 
will be found in the corresponding period of Anglo-Saxon 
history. But the cause of this difference should perhaps 
be sought, not so much in the greater courage of the Brit- 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWOKD. 31 

on, as in the better power of calculation possessed by the book i. 

SChap. 8. 
axon. 

' Caractacus,' says Tacitus, ' fled for protection to Cartis- m * en - 

" , t-wt • tranco into 

mandua, queen of the Brigantes. But adversity has no Eome - 
friends. By that princess he was loaded with irons, and 
delivered up to the conqueror. He had waged war with the 
Romans during the last nine years. His fame was not con- 
fined to his native island : it passed into the provinces and 
spread all over Italy. Curiosity was eager to behold the 
heroic chieftain who for such a length of time made head 
against a great and powerful empire. Even at Rome the 
name of Caractacus was in high celebrity. The emperor, 
willing to magnify the glory of the conquest, bestowed the 
highest praise on the valour of the vanquished king. He 
assembled the people to behold a spectacle worthy of their 
view. In the field before the camp the praetorian bands 
were drawn up under arms. The followers of the British 
chief walked in procession. The military accoutrements, 
the harness and rich collars, which he had gained in vari- 
ous battles, were displayed with pomp. The wife of Carac- 
tacus, his daughter, and his brother followed next ; he him- 
self closed the melancholy train. The rest of the prisoners, 
struck with terror, descended to mean and abject suppli- 
cations. Caractacus alone was superior to misfortune ! 
"With a countenance still unalterated, not a symptom of fear 
appearing, no sorrow, no condescension, he behaved with 
dignity even in ruin.' 

We all remember the interest with which we have read 
this passage of history in our early years, the sympathy 
with which we have listened to the fitting and noble senti- 
ments which the captive prince has been made to utter on 
that occasion, and the delight with which we have seen the 
chains of the captives struck off, and heard the gracious 
words with which both the emperor and the empress pro- 
nounced them free.* On the following morning the Senate 
described the victory over Caractacus as not inferior in im- 
portance to the great events in the past days of Roman his- 

* It is probable that in the quiet and prosperous times before the invasion under 
Claudius, Caractacus was under the care of Roman teachers. No prince in Gaul 
would have been without that advantage. 



32 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

book i. tory — as when Syphax was led in chains through the city 

— -' by Publius Scipio, when Pertinax appeared among them as 

the captive of Lucius Paulus, and when kings and princes 

were seen by the Roman people at the chariot wheels of 

other commanders.* 

The Britons But even the fate of Caractacus did not extinguish the 

not sub- ° 

dued. hopes of the Silures. They fell incessantly upon all stragglers 

and small detachments of the enemy. In one instance two 
whole cohorts were cut off and destroyed by them. Other 
tribes, encouraged by their successes, joined them in this 
kind of warfare. Ostorius had so much experience of this 
nature that he learnt to describe the Silures as a people who 
would never be conquered — their extirpation only, he said, 
could bring peace to the Roman settlement in Britain. In 
the midst of these hostilities Ostorius died. The Britons 
looked on the event as more important to them than a great 
victory. Before the arrival of his successor a chief named 
Yenusius, then at the head of the countrymen of Caracta- 
cus, defeated a whole legion under the command of Manlius 
Valens. Avitus Didius Gallus was the officer sent in the 
place of Ostorius. Didius restored the confidence of the 
army by a severe defeat of the Britons. But Didius was 
an old man, not equal to the vigorous prosecution of such a 
war. The conduct of it was left in consequence, for the 
most part, to subordinate officers. One of these, however, 
gained a victory over a considerable army of Britons. In 
a. d. 58 Didius was succeeded by Yeranius, who made suc- 
cessful incursions into the territories of the disaffected, but 
died within a year after his arrival. The chief command in 

Suetonius. Britain then passed to the hands of Caius Suetonius Pauli- 
nus, one of the ablest generals in the service of the empire. 
Suetonius was a man of great ambition, bent on being not 
less distinguished than the greatest commander of his time ; 
and Britain was the field in which this dream of eminence 
was to be realized.f 

Yenusius, who had defeated the Roman legion under 
Manlius, had married Cartismandua, the queen of the Bri- 

* Tacitus, Ann. xii. 32-38. Agric. xiv 
\ Ibid. xii. 40 ; xiv. 29. Hist. iii. 45. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 33 

gantes, tho woman who had betrayed Caractacus. The dis- book i. 
affection called forth among the subjects of Cartismandua — '-' 
by her treachery, and some other causes, led to a civil war, 
in which the party adhering to the queen sought the pro- 
tection of the Romans ; while Venusius, her husband, who 
had been her armour-bearer, and whom she had married 
since she became queen, called upon her to surrender her 
sovereignty to him, and placed himself at the head of the 
Britons who were in arms against the invaders. Since 
the defeat of Caractacus, Yenusius was the most able com- 
mander among the natives. 

Suetonius was aware that religion, hardly less than pa- slaughter 
triotism, contributed to keep alive the disaffection of the Druids. 
Britons. In their transactions with the Gauls the Romans 
had learnt to regard the Druids with distrust and aversion. 
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, so firmly avowed 
by those ministers of religion, and received with so much 
confidence from their lips by their people, was an offence 
to the Roman, who was pleased to regard his own scepticism 
on all subjects of that nature as a result to be expected from 
civilized modes of thought. In this Druid teaching, the 
natural in man gave the lie to the artificial, and the artifi- 
cial could hardly fail to be displeased. This presumption 
of barbarism, moreover, was a presumption of which a po- 
tent use was made. The hold upon the future which this 
doctrine gave to the Druid made him master of the present. 
By filling the mind of the people with false hopes from this 
source, he could at pleasure stimulate them to insurrection 
and to the most daring enterprises. Thus the Druids were 
politically formidable ; and to prepare the way for their ex- 
termination, the most atrocious things were laid to their 
charge. Historians, orators, and poets contrasted the dark 
forests of the priests of Gaul and Britain with the sylvan 
scenes which had been sacred to religion in Greece and 
Italy ; and to the gay ceremonies and the festive pleasures 
of their own worship, they opposed the Druid priests slay- 
ing human victims, lustrating the trees of the forest with 
human gore, and calling up every horror that might scare 
the imagination, and make the worshippers their victims. 
Vol. I— 3 



34 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

book i. In reading such descriptions it becomes us to remember that 
— -' it bad been ruled that the Druids should be disposed of, and 
it had become expedient to give the bad name as prelimi- 
nary to that proceeding. Even Augustus infringed his gen- 
eral law of tolerance by forbidding any observance of the 
Druidical rites in Rome. Tiberius went further, and Clau- 
dius not only decreed the extinction of those rites even in 
Gaul, but acted on that decree with much rigour. In Brit- 
ain, the island of Mona, now Anglesea, was known to be 
the stronghold of the Druids, and Suetonius resolved to as- 
sail them in that retreat. 

Ostorius had carried the Roman eagles far in that direc- 
tion. There were British roads along which infantry and 
cavalry might march even to such distances, without diffi- 
culty ; but the baggage and provision departments would 
remain to task the patience and ingenuity of a commander. 
The approach of Suetonius to the Menai Strait would prob- 
ably be from Chester. On reaching its bank, the general 
issued orders that flat-bottomed boats should be prepared 
to convey the infantry across. The cavalry were to endeav- 
our to ford, and if that should be found impracticable, the 
men were to take their place in the boats, and to draw their 
horses through the water after them. We shall allow Taci- 
tus to describe the scene which presented itself as the Ro- 
man soldiers approached the opposite shore, and what fol- 
lowed when a landing was secured. ' The shore of the isl- 
and was lined with the hostile army, in which were women 
dressed in dark and dismal garments, with their hair stream- 
ing to the wind, bearing torches in their hands, and running 
like furies up and down the ranks. Around stood the 
Druids, with hands spread to heaven, and uttering dreadful 
prayers and imprecations. The novelty of the sight struck 
our soldiers with dismay, so that they stood as if petrified — ■ 
a mark for the enemy's javelins. At length, animated by 
their general, and encouraging one another not to fear an 
army of women and fanatics, they rushed upon the enemy, 
bore down all before them, and involved them in their own 
fires. The troops of the enemy were completely defeated, a 
garrison placed in the island, and the groves which had 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 35 

been the consecrated scenes of the most barbarous supersti- book i. 
tions were levelled to the ground.' * Such were the sights ^- ' 
to be seen some eighteen centuries since, on a spot where 
modern science has erected some of its most wonderful tro- 
phies. The Menai Strait is at present almost a fairy land, 
so rich is it both from art and from nature. Coupled with 
the surrounding scenery, and seen under the sunlight of a 
summer evening, it is one of the most beautiful scenes in 
Europe, hardly exceeded in loveliness by the shores of Greece 
or the passage of the Bosphorus. 

While the severe policy of Suetonius, so characteristic oppressive 
of the military history of ancient Rome, was producing its Romans. e 
natural effect on the mind of the Britons, another feature of 
the Roman ascendency, was calling forth the effects no less 
natural to it elsewhere. The destructiveness of the Roman 
sword was not more notorious than the rapacity of Roman 
officials. The writings of Roman authors teem with evi- 
dence on this subject. In the times now under review, the 
solicitude of nearly all educated men in Rome was to secure 
some government appointment, and having obtained it, to 
use every available expedient to make it as productive as 
possible, and in as short a time as possible. The descriptions 
of the extortion, fraud, and violence resorted to by this class 
of men, are often so revolting as to seem almost incredible. 
Of wrongs in this form a full share fell to the lot of the subju- 
gated Britons. JSTero was now upon the throne, and the sea- 
son was one of more than ordinary licence among the impe- 
rial officers in the provinces.f 

PrasutaoTis, who ruled over the Iceni, had long been the insurrec- 

& ' » i i tion under 

ally of Rome. He was known to be a man of some wealth ; Boadicea. 
and in the hope of securing at least the half of it to his fam- 
ily, he left it to be divided equally between his daughters 
and the emperor. But Catus, the procurator, seized the 
whole, and the military at the same time took possession of 
the country. Boadicea, the widow of Prasutagus, protested 
against these proceedings. To punish her presumption, she 
was scourged in the manner of a slave ; and her daughters 
were taken from her by the officers and dishonoured. If 

* Tacit. Ann. xiv. 30. Agric. xiv. f Tacitus, Ann. lib. xiv. 



36 CELTS AND KOMANS. 

book i. such a course could be taken towards such persons, we may 

Chap. 2. 



imagine what the grievances were which often fell on par- 
ties in inferior conditions. In fact, it is easy to believe that 
the language of the Britons at this juncture was such as 
Tacitus has attributed to them. Our sons, they said, are 
torn from us, and made to serve in the Roman armies, as if 
it became them to be prepared to die for anything rather 
than for their country. Our houses are entered at all hours 
by mean and licentious officials, who rob us according to 
their pleasure. The head of the military plays the tyrant 
over our persons, and the head of the government plays the 
spoliator in regard to our substance ; and between them 
they make life not worth possessing, if to be possessed only 
under such conditions. The rich and the poor are fast de- 
scending to one level, and the strong are made to submit to 
every sort of humiliation from the hands of the weak. Our 
forefathers resisted Csesar, and the enemy was taught to re- 
spect our coast for a hundred years to come. To be as free as 
our fathers, we have only to be as resolved and as brave.* 
That the Britons thought and felt in this manner we can 
readily believe, whatever doubt we may have of their abil- 
ity to express themselves exactly in such terms. 
Massacre of While Suetonius was engaged in his expedition against 
mans. Mona, discourse to this effect became general and loud 
among the natives ; and the treatment of Boadicea and her 
daughters sufficed to raise the embers of disaffection, every- 
where existing, into a flame. The Britons assembled in vast 
multitudes. Every day added to their numbers. Their 
first onset was at Camulodunum. In that settlement, for 
some weeks before, strange sights, and unnatural voices, at 
the dead of night, had seemed to betoken the approach of 
some great calamity. When the outbreak began, the Brit- 
ons reduced everything in Camulodunum to ashes, putting 
the garrison, and every stranger, to the sword. The ninth 
legion marched in the direction of that colony in the hope 
of being in time to save the garrison. But they were 
met by the insurgents, surrounded, and the whole of the in- 
fantry destroyed. Petilius, the commander, and a portion 

* Tacitus, Ann. lib. xiv. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 37 

of the cavalry, were all that could escape. Catus Declaims, book |- 

the obnoxious procurator, with the courage generally found 

in such men, hurried to the coast, and sought refuge in 
Gaul. 

Suetonius, on receiving tidings of these events, prepared 
to move southward. He had achieved a difficult enterprise, 
but he had now to retrace his steps, and to find himself beset 
with new dangers. He found the country everywhere in 
the hands of the insurgents. In the language of Tacitus — 
' He marched through the midst of the enemy to Londinum 
[London], which was not yet honoured with the name of a 
colony, but considerable from the resort of merchants and 
from its trade. Here, hesitating whether he should make 
that town the seat of war, he considered how weak the gar- 
rison was, and, warned by the check which Petilius had in- 
curred by his rashness, he determined to preserve the whole 
by sacrificing one town. Nor did the tears and lamenta- 
tions of the people imploring his assistance, prevent him 
from giving the signal for marching, though he received 
into his army all who were disposed to follow him. But all 
those whom the weakness of sex, or the infirmities of age, 
or attachment to the place, induced to stay behind, fell into 
the hands of the enemy. The same calamity befel the 
municipal town of Yerulam.' * The historian adds, that 
seventy thousand citizens and allies were said to have per- 
ished in those places. "We are disposed to think, however, 
that the number of the slain has been greatly exaggerated. 
It is not probable that the population left in such circum- 
stances, in the town of Yerulam, and in a place ' not yet 
honoured with the name of a colony,' could have amounted 
to seventy thousand. But that the destruction was terrific 
in extent, and meant so to be, may be readily believed. 

Everything rested now with the skill and firmness of 
Suetonius. Such was the fear which had been diffused by 
these disasters, that the second legion hesitated to join his 
standard. By collecting contributions of men from every 
garrison, he succeeded in raising his army to ten thousand, 
including cavalry. "With this force he determined to give 

* Ann. lib. xiv. 88 xxix. xxx. 



38 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

oha? 2" Da ^ e to tlie multitude which had obeyed the call of Boa- 

dicea. The spot chosen by him gave him a dense forest in 

the rear, and an open plain in front. The legionaries were 
marshalled in a succession of deep ranks. The light-armed 
troops were disposed around in companies. The flanks 
were covered with the cavalry. The Britons were seen 
bounding from place to place in companies and groups. So 
flushed were they with their successes, and so confident of 
victory, that they had brought their women with them in 
waggons, to be the witnesses of their achievements. The 
Roman historians describe Boadicea as a woman above the 
ordinary stature, with a countenance expressive of lofty and 
resolute purposes. They speak, as we have seen, of her 
yellow hair descending to her waist ; of her richly coloured 
dress, and her ornaments of gold. So attired she rode, with 
her daughters, in her war-chariot, from rank to rank, ad- 
dressing patriotic sentiments to one tribe after another, on 
the eve of the battle. The drift of her appeal is said to 
have been, that she thought little of her descent from noble 
ancestors, or of her position as one possessed of sovereignty 
and wealth. She was before them as one of themselves, 
and as such was prepared to brave the worst in the cause 
of their common liberty. She was bent, also, on avenging 
the indignities that had been inflicted on her person, and 
the dishonour that had been done to her children. Proof 
enough had been given that no right or feeling of humanity 
could be safe where Home should be ascendant. Death it- 
self was to be coveted if compared with life under such a 
rule. But the gods, who had borne long with this wicked- 
ness, would bear with it no longer. Hitherto their enemies 
had fallen before them, or fled to their hiding-places. It 
was only needful they should be brave as heretofore, and 
the fate of the second legion would be that of the army now 
in their view. Their shouts, their numbers, and their cour- 
age would do all. But come what may, should the men 
consent to live and to be slaves, as for herself, a woman, her 
resolve was to be victorious or perish. 

Suetonius, we may be sure, needed no one to remind 
him that a day had come which would cover him with dis- 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. OV 

honour, or do much to gratify his long-cherished thirst of book i. 

military renown. We can imagine him, as he passes on his 

war-horse from rank to rank, and as he glances, with closed 
lip and darkened brow, on the vast but ill-directed multi- 
tude spread out before him. It was natural he should speak 
on that day as Tacitus tells us he spoke — that he should ex- 
press his scorn of the savage hordes which had dared to face 
the legions of Rome ; and that he should aim to stimulate 
the courage of his men, by setting forth the shame and dis- 
aster that must be attendant on defeat, and the certainty 
that their discipline must more than suffice to counterbal- 
ance any want of numbers, should they only acquit them- 
selves with their wonted fidelity and fearlessness. "When 
the strife began, the legionaries received the first onset of Defeat and 
the Britons in silence, but retained their lines unbroken, the Britons 
They then formed themselves into a wedge-shape, and 
marched steadily onward ; the auxiliaries ranged themselves 
after the same manner ; and the cavalry bore down upon 
the enemy with their spears levelled, everywhere clearing 
their way before them. The first charge, however, did not 
decide the fortunes of that dreadful day. The Britons ral- 
lied once and again. The legionaries were in danger of 
being exhausted ; but the issue was in their favour. The 
natives, once thoroughly disordered, the waggons served to 
impede their flight, and the destruction which followed was 
horrible. Men, women, children, the very beasts which 
drew the carriages of the Britons, all perished under the 
weapons of an enraged soldiery. Eighty thousand natives 
are said to have fallen on that day ; and it should be re- 
membered that those who give us these numbers had the 
means, not only of estimating their own work, but of giving 
it a permanent record. Boadicea was faithful to her vow — 
she sought death by poison, rather than fall into the hands 
of such an enemy.* 

The natural sequence to this field of blood would have change in 

1 the Roman 

been a reign ot terror, even more terrible than any that policy. 
had preceded. But the imperial government saw with 

* Tacit Ann. xir. 31-39. Vita Agric. xv. xvi. Xiphilin. ex Dionc in 
Neron. 



40 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

book i. alarm the dangers to which its legions, and its entire author- 

Chap. 2. . 

— '-' ity in Britain, had been exposed, and became concerned 
that a more just and lenient spirit should be infused into 
the administration for the time to come. Suetonius, to 
whom such a policy could not be acceptable, was ere long 
recalled. Tarpilianus, Trebellius, and Bolanus, who became 
successively governors, sought peace rather than conquest. 
Eight years from the defeat of Boadicea thus passed. But 
by this time the affairs of the empire had become more set- 
tled. Vespasian, who had served in Britain, had become 
emperor, and during the eight years that followed, war was 
carried on with vigour against the Brigantes and the Si- 
lures. Petilius Cerealis, a man of the highest military rep- 
utation, c onducted this war ; and he was succeeded in com- 
mand by Julius Frontinus, who so acquitted himself as not 
to suffer in comparison with such a predecessor. After five 
years of hostility the Brigantes were made to profess them- 
selves the allies of Borne ; and three years later, the war 
against the Silures was pushed with such vigour into the 
retreats and fastnesses of their country, that their strength 
was finally broken, and fear of serious annoyance in the fu- 
ture from that quarter came to an end,* 
Govern- These events prepared the way for the administration of 

ment of Ju- , . r . J 

uus Agn- Cneius Julius Agricola, whose name has been made so fa- 

cola. ° , 

miliar to later generations by the pen of Tacitus, his son-in- 
law. Agricola, in common with Yespasian, had seen con- 
siderable service in Britain. On his arrival, the Ordovices, 
one of the most warlike of the British tribes, had surprised 
a detachment of cavalry, and utterly destroyed them. Ag- 
ricola summoned the army from its winter quarters, and re- 
suming the old policy of governing by terror, he all but an- 
nihilated the offending nation. 

In the fourth year of his administration Agricola had 
extended his conquests so far northward, that to form a 
boundary of the Roman province in that direction, he con- 
structed a chain of forts from the mouth of the Clyde across 
to the mouth of the Forth — that is, from Dumbarton to 

* Tacit. Ann. xiv. 3*7-39. Vita Agric. viii. xvi. xvii. Hist. i. 9-60; 
ii. 97. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 41 

Edinburgh. His subsequent campaign along the eastern book i. 
coast beyond the Forth, cannot be said to have been sue- . HAF ' 
cessful. In one respect it was a novelty in British warfare. 
The fleet of the Romans on the sea co-operated with the 
army on the land, carrying stores, making descents on the 
coast, and otherwise aiding the plans of the general. The 
Roman encampment, as it moved from place to place north- 
ward of the spot where Edinburgh now stands, exhibited a 
singular mixture of cavalry, infantry, and sailors — the sol- 
diers and the seamen vieing with each other in their different 
tales of adventure, but all prosecuting their common enter- 
prise in the same buoyant and hopeful spirit. In the one 
great engagement of that season the advantage was with 
the Romans ; but their losses were considerable and the issue 
could not be regarded as decisive. It was in the eighth and 
last year of his administration that the military genius of 
Agricola achieved its great work. In this enterprise the 
army included several cohorts of Britons, who by this time 
had been successfully initiated into the discipline of the 
Roman soldier. 

The Caledonians — the tribes inhabiting the north and Expedite 
the north-west of Scotland — appear to have regarded this cpldo- 
campaign as likely to determine the future of their country. 
Dismayed as they had been at times by the skill and appli- 
ances of the Romans, if not by their courage, they were very 
far from having abandoned hope. Old feuds were forgot- 
ten. The feeling of patriotism prevailed over that of tribe 
or clan. The contributions of armed men from different 
quarters amounted to more than thirty thousand. Both 
youth and age, such as might have pleaded for exemption, 
were present, eagerly proffering their service. Among the 
chiefs at the head of those many gatherings, the greatest 
was an experienced leader named Galgacus. Highly im- 
passioned appeals are said to have been made by Galgacus 
to the Caledonians on the one side, and by Agricola to the 
Romans on the other. Both parties saw the interests at 
stake, and both were impatient for the fray. On the one 
side country and freedom were the issue, on the other hon- 
our and life. 



42 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

book i. Agricola marshalled his eight thousand auxiliary infant- 

- — - iy in the centre, and posted his three thousand cavalry as 
Ardoch. wings to the footmen. The legions were drawn up in the 
rear, at the head of the entrenchments — a reserve of Roman 
blood which was not to be spilt unless necessary. The 
Caledonians stretched their rank to a formidable width on 
the rising ground which they had chosen. But their more 
advanced line was ranged along the more level ground to- 
wards the foot of the acclivity. Considerable space remain- 
ed between this line and the advanced cohorts of the Ro- 
mans. In that space the cavalry and charioteers of the 
Caledonians rushed to and fro in great excitement. This 
show of numbers and spirit produced its impression. Agri- 
cola spread out his force to a greater breadth, that it might 
be less unequal to that of the enemy. But every man felt 
that what was thus gained in space was lost in strength. 
Some of the officers suggested that the legions in reserve 
should advance to the lines. But Agricola was not dispos- 
ed to follow such counsel. He at once dismounted, sent 
away his horse, and placing himself near the colours of the 
infantry, the spot where the danger was expected to be 
thickest, gave the signal for battle. 

The fight began with missive weapons, which were 
thrown from a distance. In this kind of fighting the Cale- 
donians, and the Britons generally, were more skilled than 
the Romans. Agricola saw that the advantage was not 
with his men. He accordingly gave orders that some of the 
cohorts should charge the enemy with the sword. This 
turned the scale. The small shields and the long unpointed 
swords of the Caledonians, left them almost defenceless in a 
close encounter with such an enemy. The cohorts not only 
used their short swords with great dexterity, but dashed 
the bosses of their shields on the exposed heads and faces of 
their foes. Everything yielded to this onset. Other cohorts 
followed the example thus set them, and with like success. 
In the meanwhile the charge of the Caledonian horsemen 
and charioteers had been so furious, that the Roman cavalry 
had given way. The narrowness of the place neutralized 
discipline by preventing anything like a regular combat. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 43 

From this cause, and from the inequalities of the ground, book i. 

the greatest confusion ensued. Horses without riders, char- 

iots with no one to guide them, rushed from the ranks, and 
augmented the disorder. The reserved Caledonian force on 
the hill now descended to the strife, and, by outflanking the 
Romans, hoped to fall upon their rear. But Agricola com- 
manded four squadrons of horse to charge this reserved 
force, which they did, and having passed through the line, 
wheeled round and fell upon the enemy from behind. This 
was the crisis of the struggle. All that followed was car- 
nage. Many of the Caledonians fled in panic where there 
was no danger. Others refused to fly, and sold their lives 
as dearly as brave men in such circumstances could sell 
them. Not until nightfall did the Eomans desist from 
the pursuit and the slaughter, chasing the fugitives to their 
last hiding-places in the hills, the forests, and the marshes. 
Ten thousand of the Caledonians fell in this engagement. 
The loss of the Romans was little more than three hundred. 
Such are the advantages of military art and discipline over 
mere military courage. 

This battle is supposed to have taken place in a district 
known as the moor of Ardoch, at the foot of the Grampians 
in Perthshire. "We can readily imagine the picture which 
the Roman historian describes as seen from the moor of 
Ardoch on the following day — the deep and melancholy 
silence that had come into the place of the cry and uproar 
of the battle ; the hills deserted ; the houses of the natives 
in the distance disappearing in fire and smoke ; not a man 
to be found by any search for him ; all a vast and dreary 
solitude. 

By this victory- Agricola may be said to have completed completion 

a i . i -i ti , t i ofthecon- 

the conquest ot the island. But, as commonly happens quest of 

U , t . i Britain. 

where sovereignty is despotic, the general served a jealous 
and an ungrateful master. Domitian recalled the successful 
soldier to Rome, and Agricola, on his return, consulted his 
safety by retiring to private life for the remainder of his 
days. In Britain his genius had achieved nearly all that 
could be accomplished ; and by encouraging the arts of 
peace wherever the sword had ensured tranquillity, he had 



44 CELTS AND KOMANS. 

book i. set an example of the kind of service in which his successors 
— - were to find their chief occupation.* 
tranquility Through eighty years from the death of Domitian, the 
Ai!toniiu D s. imperial sceptre passed into the hands of wise and virtuous 
princes, and those years were to Britain years of peace. In 
a. d. 122 the Emperor Hadrian visited this island, in pursu- 
ance of his plan to inspect in person every part of his do- 
minions. During his stay, that prince caused a rampart of 
earth to be raised across the island from the Tyne to the 
Solway, which became known in aftertimes as the wall of 
Hadrian.f But in the reign of Antoninus Pius it was 
deemed prudent to restore the northern boundary of the 
province to its ancient limits as fixed by Agricola, and the 
works which that general had constructed across from the 
Clyde to the Forth were strengthened by a line of defence 
similar to that which Hadrian had raised more southward. 
The Caledonians had given frequent signs of disquietude, 
and the intention of this proceeding was to keep them more 
effectually in check.;}: 
Accession of On the accession of the Emperor Commodus in a. d. 180, 

Commodus x ' 

-disorder, this long interval of tranquillity came to an end. The con- 
duct of the man in possession of the throne was such as to 
ensure disorder elsewhere. The Caledonians made their 
way to the southward of the wall of Antoninus, and were 
joined by many of the Britons in the northern district of 
the province. Ulpius Marcellus, the Roman general, a man 
of worth and capacity, succeeded, after several engagements, 
in checking the revolt, and in obliging the Caledonians to 
retire within their own borders. But in this instance also, 
the successes of the general made him an object of jealousy 
to his master ; and concerning military proceedings in Brit- 
ain after the dismissal of Marcellus, we know nothing for 
some years, except that the discords among the legionaries 
in these parts seemed to keep place with the rapacity and 
corruption of the praetorians in Rome.§ 

* Tacitus, Vita Agric. xviii.-xl. 

\ Script. Hist. August. Vita Hadrian. 51-57. Xiphil. 1. 792. Eutrop. 
viii. 7. 

i Script. Hist. August. Vita Ant. Pii, 132 ; Eutrop. viii. 8. 

§ Script. Hist. Aug. Vita Commod. 275 et scq. ; Xiphil. lib. lxxii. § 8. 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 45 

In a. d. 192 we find Clodius Albinus at the head of the book i. 

Chap 2 

army in Britain ; and five years later, this general puts forth — '-' 
his claim to the purple in opposition to Septimius Severus. 
The two competitors met in that year near Lyons, where 
the defeat of Albinus was decisive. To prosecute this 
scheme Albinus had withdrawn the largest possible force 
from Britain. The Caledonians and northern tribes had 
seized on the occasion to assert their independence, and to 
make incursions southward. 

So serious had the aspect of affairs become, that Severus cam P ai ? n 
himsell, though advanced m age, and a great sunerer trom severus. 
gout, resolved to assume the command of the army in this 
distant region. The emperor was borne from place to place 
on a litter, but prosecuted the war with extraordinary ar- 
dour. The campaign, from its being chiefly through woods 
and marshes, proved to be, not only laborious and protracted, 
but most costly of human life. Xiphiline makes the loss of 
the Romans to have been fifty thousand. Ultimately the 
Caledonians were made to sue for peace, and peace was 
granted them.* 

The memorable event in connexion with this enterprise 
was the erection of the famous wall of Severus. This wall 
was raised nearly on a line with that of Hadrian, but it did 
not consist, as in the former case, of a mere embankment of 
earth. It was constructed of stone, twelve feet in height, 
and eight feet in thickness, with towers and stations at given 
spaces along the whole distance. Parallel with the wall 
was a military way and a dyke — and all these works were 
extended from Tynemouth on the eastern coast of the isl- 
and, to Bowness on the western. During two years the em- 
peror employed his legions on this stupendous undertaking. 
The result was such as to justify even that amount of 
labour. Through a century and a half from this time the 
Caledonians rarely attempted to disturb the peace of the 
country thus protected. This wall was of course perpetually 
garrisoned and guarded.f 

* Aurel. Victor, in septim. Herodian, iii. 20-22, 46 ; Xiphil. ex Dione, in 
Sev. 

f Xiphil. ex Dione, Sever. Orosius, vii. 11. Spartian. Vita Sev. Eutrop. 
Horsley, Brit. Rom. 61, 62, 116-158. 



46 



CELTS AND EOMANS. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 2. 



But domestic anxiety, in addition to age and impaired 
health, weighed heavily on Severus. His sons, Caracalla 
and Geta, were two of the most unprincipled and profligate 
men of the age — ready to purchase the gratification of their 
passions by any amount of crime. In the city of York, two 
years after the conclusion of his campaign against the Cale- 
donians, the emperor died — more, we have reason to believe, 
from grief than from disease. His two sons were left joint 
heirs to his authority. The young men were at enmity with 
each other, but both hastened to leave Britain that they 
might seize on the honours awaiting them in Borne, and 
surrender themselves to the pleasures that would be there 
at their command. 

At this point another long interval occurs through which 
we find nothing, or next to nothing, in Roman authors con- 
cerning Britain. It is probable that the seventy years which 
followed from a. d. 211 to a. d. 284 were years of peace. 
The wall of Severus fenced off inquietude from the north. 
Submission had become general and settled in the south. 
Had there been commotion and bloodshed, history, which 
is so much occupied in recording such events, would not 
have been silent. The progress of order and industry is 
noiseless and imperceptible, and estimated truly only by the 
wise. 

In a. d. 284 Diocletian became emperor. In his time 
the empire was parcelled out between four princes — be- 
tween himself and Maximian as emperors, and Galerius and 
Constantius as Csesars. In the division of territory between 
these princes, Gaul and Britain fell to the lot of Constan- 
tius. But before this division had taken place, a fifth com- 
petitor had made his appearance. Carausius, an officer of 
distinction, had been sent by Diocletian to suppress the pi- 
racies of the Franks and Saxons, who began about this time 
to infest the narrow seas, and the coasts of Gaul and Brit- 
ain, as freebooters. Carausius, however, was more intent 
upon enriching himself than upon executing the commands 
of the emperor. To escape the punishment with which he 
was menaced, he seduced the fleet committed to his charge 
from their allegiance, entered into an alliance with the 



REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 4:7 

pirates, and at last prevailed on the military in Britain to book i. 
accept him as their chief. Maximian had deemed it prudent — '— 
to sanction this usurpation. In a.d. 292 Constantius deter- 
mined that an effort should be made to bring it to an end. 
But before the war had extended from Gaul to Britain, 
Carausius was assassinated by Alectus, one of his officers, 
who assumed the purple in his stead. Alectus had been in 
possession of his ill-acquired power about three years, when 
he was defeated and slain ; and the accession of Constantius 
to supreme authority in Britain, was hailed by all but the 
lawless as the advent of a deliverer.* 

These events belong to the year a.d. 296. Nine years 
later, Diocletian and Maximian resigned the purple ; and 
Constantius became emperor. But his imperial honours 
were of short duration. In the following year he died of 
sickness in the city of York. His son Constantine, after- 
wards Constantine the Great, then in Britain, became his 
successor. The reign of Constantine extended to something 
more than thirty years, and that interval was to Britain an 
interval of order and prosperity. f 

But by this time the marauding tribes in the northern The Picts 
part of the island had come to be known by the names of andScots - 
Picts and Scots, and their incursions southward had grown 
to be more bold and frequent. The Emperor Constans, the 
second son of Constantine, engaged in a formidable expedition 
to chastise these intruders, but history reports little concern- 
ing the result. In the struggle between the usurper Mag- 
nentius and Constantius, the third son of Constantine, Brit- 
ain shared, in common with the other provinces of the em- 
pire, in the miseries entailed by the rage of faction and of 
civil wai'4 

But, from this time onward, the great trouble in this isl- 
and arises from rude hordes of Caledonians on the land, and 
from the piratical attacks of the Franks and Saxons by sea. 
The inroads of the Picts and Scots had never been so suc- 

* Eutrop. ix. 659. Aurelius Victor, in Constant. Eumen. Panegyr. 8. 
I Aurelius Vic. in Vita, Constantin. Eumen. Panegyr. 9. Eutrop. x. 1, 11. 
\ Ammian. Marcelli. xx. c. 1 ; xiv. c. 5 ; xv. c. 5 ; xxii. c. 3. Eutrop. x. 6. 
Zosimus, ii. 



48 CELTS AND KOMANS. 

book i. cessful and destructive as in the space from a.d. 364 to a.d. 

Chap. 2. r 

367* 

Adminis- In the year last mentioned, Theodosius, one of the ablest 

iration of •> ' ' # 

Theodosius. au d wisest generals of the age, came to Britain to punish 
these marauders. He found that they had penetrated to 
the heart of the country, from the Tyne to the Thames. 
The new general came upon them near London, laden with 
booty, and bearing away men, women, and children as cap- 
tives. In a short time he forced the depredators, not only 
beyond the wall of Severus, but from the north of the Tyne 
to the north of the Clyde and Forth, and once more made 
the wall of Antoninus the boundary of the province, repair- 
ing its injuries, and adding to its places of strength. Cabals 
and treachery had weakened the Roman army ; corruption 
had taken root in the civil service ; but in Theodosius the 
province found the wise ruler and the able general. Both 
in the civil and military departments such improvements 
were realized, that the whole country seemed another home 
to those who dwelt in it. The new governor was soon re- 
called ; but the effects of his administration remained, and 
a grateful people nocked in multitudes towards the point 
of his embarkation, and lamented his departure as that of a 
father. It was the son of this Theodosius who became em- 
peror under that name.f 
Maximus, The interruption to the years of prosperity which follow- 

ed Brit- ' ed came from the ambition of Maximus, an officer in the 

tany. 

Roman army in Britain who aspired to the purple, and who 
induced the army and people of Britain to support his pre- 
tensions. Maximus had married the daughter of a British 
prince, had served under Theodosius the elder, and had done 
much to impart security and prosperity to the province. 
The British youth whom he had trained to arms, followed 
his fortunes on the Continent. They contributed to his 
early successes, and most of them survived his fate, but they 
never returned. They found their future home in the terri- 
tory known as Armorica, to which they gave the name of 
Brittany. Some years later they were joined by a large 

* Ammian. Marcel, xx. c. 1 ; xxvii. c. 9. 

\ Ammian. Marcel, xxvii. c. *7 ; xxviii. 3, 7. Claudian. Pancgyr. Tlieod. 



EEVOLTTTION BY THE SWORD. 49 

body of their countrymen, who had been led into Gaul under book i. 

. f, * Chap. 2. 

similar circumstances.* 

Throuo-h the twenty years subsequent to the fall of Max- withdraw- 
imus, the distractions and weakness ot the empire led to a Romans. 
gradual reduction of the army in Britain, until in a.d. 412, 
the last remnant was withdrawn. The story which remains 
is the melancholy one of which we shall have to speak else- 
where — the inroads of the Picts and Scots, the alleged 
pusillanimity of the Britons, and the invitation to the 
Saxons. 

Such as we have described was the revolution brought The work of 

, ° the Roman 

about by the sword in Roman Britain. The island, from sword in 

J ' Britain. 

Cornwall to the Grampians, passes into new hands. But 
this change is not the work of a day, or of a generation. It 
is achieved at great cost, and it is sustained at great cost. 
The Britons disputed every inch of ground once and again 
before surrendering it. The courage, the skill, and the spirit 
of endurance with which they defended their rude home and 
independence entitle them to our admiration. In such 
chiefs as Cassivelaunus and Caractacus we see what some 
of the greatest men in our later history would have been in 
the same circumstances. But after a while leaders of that 
order cease to appear. The warlike passions of the people 
cease to be what they had been. They dwell on the soil 
on which their fathers dwelt, but they have become men 
without a country. British authority, from being every- 
where, ceases to be anywhere. The race which was once 
the sole possessor of the soil, retains its humblest homestead 
only upon sufferance. Ingenuity and industry are encour- 
aged, but it is that they may be taxed. The able-bodied 
may become soldiers, but it is, for the most part, that they 
may be expatriated and, add to the strength of the power by 
which they have been themselves vanquished. 

This, however, is no uncommon course of events in the 
history of nations. It is generally the precursor of some- 
thing better, and, from the first, brings its good along with 
its evil. In this instance, an island which before the age 

* Sozomen. Hist. vii. 721. Prosper in Chron. An. 387. Gildas, c. 11 ; 
Nennius, xxiii. Rowland's Mona, 166, 167. 
Vol. I— .4 



50 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

ch^? 2" °f Csesar had been a comparatively unknown land — an ob- 

ject rather of imagination than knowledge to civilized men 

— comes to be an opulent province in the most powerful 
empire the world had ever seen ; and, through several cen- 
turies, a field for the display of the highest virtues and 
talents which that empire could furnish. The distance be- 
tween the barbarous and the civilized can only be narrowed 
by degrees. The evil is, that civilized man is often more 
disposed to use than to elevate those who are beneath him. 



CHAPTER III. 



EFFECT OF THE ASCENDENCY OF THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN 
ON GOVERNMENT. 

THE usages which served the purpose of law among rook i. 
the Britons are but imperfectly known to us. It is cer- -^- * 
tain that the government of the different nations was mo- assemblies 
narchical, or by chieftainship. Of course the chief, as in all Celts, 
such communities, was much influenced by the feeling of 
his tribe or nation. Strabo describes the Belgse, and the 
Gauls generally, as easily brought together in great numbers 
on public matters. On such occasions every man was for- 
ward to express his indignation against any kind of wrong 
inflicted on himself or his neighbour. One person was in- 
vested with authority to secure order. If any man at- 
tempted to interrupt a speaker he was admonished by this 
functionary to be silent ; and should he disregard a third 
admonition, the sword of the officer was used to disgrace 
the offender, by depriving him of so much of his mantle as 
made the remainder useless.* Such conferences, no doubt, 
took place among the Britons. 

But the order of succession to the supreme authority ap- British 
pears to have been more fixed and hereditary among the ings ' 
Britons than among the Gauls. Exceptions to this rule did, 
no doubt, arise, but the rule remained. Thus the Trinoban- 
tes besought Csesar that Mandubratius, the son of their late 
chief, might be invested with the authority of his father, 
and be protected in the same against the ambition of Cas- 
sivelaunus.f In later times, more than one British prince 

* Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4, § 2. Caesar, de Bel. Gal. iv. v. Tacit. Vita Agric. 
f Caesar, iii. 1. 



52 CELTS AND EOMANS. 

book i. sought the intervention of the authority of Rome on this 
— -' plea.* It is clear, also, that the law of succession was re- 
spected even when a woman happened to be the next by 
birth. Thus Cartismandua was the reigning queen of the 
Brigantes, Boadicea of the Iceni. 
Revenue. The revenue of the British kings must have been raised 

by rude and irregular means. It came from three sources 
— from their own lands and possessions ; from contributions 
made by their people ; and from their allotted share in all 
booty, whether taken from an enemy, or, after the black- 
mail process, from neighbouring tribes, 
civil autho- The authority of these chiefs was restricted almost exclu- 
Druids. sively to questions of peace and war ; and even in these 
cases, it was at their peril to slight the auguries of the 
Druids.f "What the notions of right were which determined 
the conduct of one community towards another, or of one 
man towards another, we can only conjecture, as it was a 
part of the policy of the Druids that law should never 
be committed to writing. Ca?sar, who mentions this fact, 
informs us that the Druids made use of writing on other 
occasions. AVhat was known among the Britons under the 
name of law, had been thrown into verse, and passed from 
the memory of one generation of priests to another. Many 
years were occupied in the effort to acquire the knowledge 
so conveyed. Nor was this all — the Druids were not only 
the depositaries of law, they were its administrators. Every- 
thing legislative and judicial came thus under a priestly 
influence, and took a theocratic shape — after the manner of 
those eastern countries from which the Celtic tribes had 
migrated. The people were to believe, accordingly, that 
the voice of their laws was the voice of their gods. Fines, 
torture, and death were the punishments of crime, whether 
against person or property, varying according to the magni- 
tude of the offence. The rule by terror was rigorously 
adjusted, as in the case of all such communities. Evidence 
was admitted on oath, and might be obtained by torture ; 
and acquittal might follow by compurgators or by ordeal. 

* Suetonius in Calig. 44. 

f Caesar, de Bel. Gal. i. 50. Diod. Sic. v. 354. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENTS. 53 

Such is the sum of our knowledge, resting on evidence book i. 
more or less satisfactory, in regard to government among the — '-' 
Britons.* 

The change from a government bv unwritten laws, to a Roman 
government by means 01 laws committed to writing, and ment. 
reduced to a scientific system, is great. Such was one fea- 
ture of the change in relation to government in Britain intro- 
duced by the Romans. But this change was not accom- 
plished at once. 

It was the wise policy of the Romans to regulate the 
exercises of their power according to circumstances. Where 
nothing beyond an annual tribute could be safely demanded, 
they were wont to profess themselves content with that con- 
cession, leaving the state in other respects in its original 
independence. This was all that Csesar presumed to exact 
from the Britons as the fruit of his two costly invasions. 
As the sum in this instance is not mentioned, it is probable 
that the amount promised was not large. We know that it 
was a comparatively small number of the Britons only who 
were parties to that transaction, and that the payment, 
whatever it may have been, soon ceased to be made. In 
the language of Tacitus the effect of the invasion by Caesar 
was to ' show' the island to the Roman legions, not to give 
them possession of it.f 

But where conquest and colonization were practicable, Roman co- 

*■ a ' Ionization. 

and could be made to yield honour and advantage, the aim 
of the Romans was to conquer and to colonize. Before the 
close of the first century of the Christian era, it was mani- 
fest that such objects might be realized in Britain, and we 
have seen the heavy price which Rome was prepared to pay 
that Britain might be thus allied to it. The veterans in the 
Roman army were allowed to be gainers by any successful 
experiment of this nature, considerable portions of the con- 
quered lands being always assigned to them. People not 
connected with the army or with the Government, from 
Rome or other places were encouraged to seek a home for 

* Diod. Sicul. v. 354. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4, 5. Caesar, de Bel. Gal. vi. 
12-16. 

\ Vita Arjric. xiii. 



54 



CELTS AND KOMANS. 



BOOK I. 
Ciiap. 8. 



Provinces 
of Roman 
Britain. 



industrial purposes in the settlements so formed, and might 
be vested with the privileges of Roman citizens. Hence 
the population in such places often grew with amazing 
rapidity. In regions which had been comparatively desert 
and barbarous, populous and opulent cities made their 
appearance in which the arts and refinements of Eome itself 
became suddenly naturalized. Such in this country was 
the early history of Caerleon and Lincoln, of Chester and 
York.* 

In the progress of things towards this issue, it sometimes 
happened that the Romans allowed the princes whom they 
had vanquished to retain the appearance of ruling as in 
time past. But this was only that both princes and people 
might be subdued more effectually by degrees. It was easy 
to reign through a former king by using him merely as 
a tax-gatherer. Used as a tool for such a purpose, the func- 
tionary soon became unpopular, and the people were not 
long unwilling to dispense with his presence altogether. 
Cogidumnus was a British prince who became a victim of 
this policy.f 

When, by means of this nature, as well as by the sword, 
the Romans had become sole masters of Britain, they di- 
vided its territory into six departments. But the sixth of 
these provinces, lying to the north of the friths of the Clyde 
and the Forth, was a province in name more than reality. 
The Romans never obtained any permanent footing in those 
parts. Nearly the same may be said of the fifth province, 
lying between the walls of Antoninus and Severus. That 
territory was subdued more than once, and more than once 
relinquished. But in the four remaining provinces the 
authority of Rome was ascendant and settled through more 
than three centuries. The first of these provinces, under 
the name of Britannia Prima, embraced the whole of that 
part of England which measured the distance from the Kent 
shore of the Thames to the Gloucestershire side of the 
Severn, and reached southward to the Land's End. The 



* Tacitus, Agric. c. 15, 16. Ann. lib. xiv. c. 31. Palgrave's Common- 
wealth, x. 350-358. 

f Tacit. Vita Agric. xiii. Hors. Brit. Rom. No. ?6, pp. 192, 332. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 55 

second division embraced the whole of "Wales, with some £ 00K „ L 

7 CnAP. 8. 

strips of country which have since formed border lands to 

England. The great centre territory of England, bounded 
by the German Ocean on the east, and by the lands of Wor- 
cestershire, Shropshire, and Cheshire on the west, and ex- 
tending northward from the Thames to the Humber, was 
the third province, and bore the name of Flavia Caesariensis. 
Maxima Caesariensis, the fourth province, was limited on 
the east and west by the two seas ; and, measured north- 
ward, included the whole distance from the Humber to the 
Tyne.* 

The settlements within these provinces were various, in MunTd^T 
accordance with the general law of the empire. The first Towns? 11 
in rank were the colonies. In these, which were only nine 
in number, the law and usage which obtained were, as 
nearly as possible, identical with those of Rome. Seven 
of these settlements are described as military colonies, two 
as civil. In the military colonies, the sons of soldiery, to 
whom shares in the neighbouring lands had been allot- 
ted, held them by a stern military tenure. Next in impor- 
tance to the colonies came the municipal cities. The in- 
habitants of these places were to a large extent Roman 
citizens, possessed their own magistrates, and within cer- 
tain limits enacted their own laws. But York and Verulam 
were the only municipia in Britain. There were ten places 
which bore the name of Latian towns, where the imperial 
laws were administered, but in which the people were 
governed by their own magistrates, and every new magis- 
trate, after his year of service, became a Roman citizen. 
Magistracy in all these cities was hereditary in leading 
families, and vacancies were filled up on a principle of self- 
election, or by nomination. As corporations, they very 
much resembled the close corporations of this country which 
were swept away by the late Municipal Reform Act. In 
corrupt times, these offices, as they imposed the duty of 
levying taxes, proved anything but desirable. "Very severe 
penalties, accordingly, were provided against such as re- 

* Notitia Imperii, 49. Hors. Brit. Rom. 356 et seq. Henry's Hist. ii. app. 



56 CELTS AND K0MANS. 

book i. fused to act when called upon to do so. After the fourth 

Chap. 8. r 

century, and as a protection against abuses, the citizens 

were empowered to choose a Defensor, who acted as a 
popular representative in relation to the aristocratic body 
of magistrates. In the cities of Gaul the bishops generally 
filled this office. In cities not of the privileged class above 
named, the natives, and the residents generally, were not 
only subject to imperial laws, but were precluded from all 
share in the administration of them. In course of time 
these restrictions were in some degree infringed, but to this 
effect was the polity set up by the Romans in Britain. To 
the last a strong line of demarcation was preserved between 
the conquerors and the conquered.* 

The prefect. The authority to which all things within these settle- 
ments, and through the four provinces, were subject, was 
that of the prastor or prefect. Both the civil and the mili- 
tary power was vested in this officer. He commanded the 
army, appointed magistrates, and regulated every part of 
the administration. He was invested with these powers by 
the emperor, and to him he was responsible ; but in all 
other relations his authority was supreme. During a long 
interval, large discretionary power was entrusted to the 
prefect, that he might be perpared to meet emergencies in 
distant provinces by more summary methods than the law 
could provide. This liberty, as will be supposed, was often 
grossly abused. In the reign of the Emperor Hadrian it 
came to an end. The ' perpetual edict ' issued by that 
prince made the laws which were imperative in Rome to be 
imperative in the provinces.f 

Procurator. The only officer in the province who did not hold his 
appointment at the pleasure of the prefect was the procura- 
tor or quaestor. It belonged to this functionary, with his 
complement of officials, to collect the taxes, and to superintend 
everything relating to revenue. It often happened that the 

* Lipsius, de Magn. Rom. i. 6. The following are the names of the nine 
colonies : Richborough, London, Colchester, Bath, Caerleon, Gloucester, Lin- 
coln, Chester. In the age of the Antonines the distinction between the colo- 
nies, the municipia, and the Latian cities was much effaced, and as the empire 
further declined they may be said to have disappeared. — Palgrave's Common- 
wealth, c. x. 

f Tillemont, Histoire des Emperatrs, ii. 264. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 57 

procurator acted, and was expected to act, as a spy on the B ^fl 

proceedings of the prefect, making his report to the emperor 

concerning any excesses, or any suspicious proceedings in 
that quarter. In other instances the two officials were 
manifestly on terms understood between them, each leaving 
the other to make the best for himself of his position. But 
it was supposed that the imperial interests would be more 
secure by being placed thus in two hands, than by being 
left altogether in one. From experience, the tendency was 
to widen the distinction between these two authorities, 
rather than to diminish it. 

Thus in Soman Britain the powers of government passed ™® ™™ lu " 
wholly out of the hands of the natives, and remained to the fg™™~ 
end in the hands of the conquerors. The British princes 
gradually sunk into obscurity, and bowed at length, in 
common with their subjects, to the power which it had 
been found vain to resist. The two elements — the con- 
querors and the conquered — never blended. British youths 
were trained to arms, but it was, for the most part, that 
they might be drafted off to foreign service. Others were 
trained to arts, but it was that they might be tamed by 
such pursuits, and made passive, not that they might be- 
come qualified for public life, or rise to any political in- 
fluence. The resistance of the natives had been so pro- 
longed and determined, that the hope of any healthy 
amalgamation between them and the invaders was not en- 
tertained until the season for acting upon it with effect had 
passed. 

Supposing the imperial laws to have been purely ad- 
ministered, the change introduced must have secured to the 
Britons great advantage in all suits between subject and 
subject. Their old Druid usages could hardly hqve given 
them the same degree of protection in such cases. And 
beyond a doubt the protection of property, and the en- 
couragement of industry, conferred by the Romans, was 
an immense advance on anything of that nature which had 
existed previously, or could have existed under any other 
influence. But the laws in relation even to such matters 
were not always purely administered. Before the time of 



58 CELTS AND KOMANS. 

book i. Hadrian, their authority seemed everywhere to diminish 

with the distance of the province to which they were to be 

applied ; and after that time, the Britons had often too 
much reason to complain of the arbitrary and corrupt pro- 
ceedings of their superiors. The account given by Tacitus 
of the reforms introduced by Agricola, shows pretty clearly 
what the ordinary state of things had been. He began 
with the reform of his own household, removing all slaves 
and freedmen from public offices. In regard to taxation, 
he took care, it is said, that the assessments should be just 
and equal. He put a check also on the tax-gatherer, whose 
extortions, real or suspected, were often more the ground 
of disaffection than the tax itself. Collectors, it seems, 
had been used to require that all the produce of a district 
should be brought to some fixed place, where the producer 
should, appear, and have the privilege of purchasing his 
own property at the reduced value fixed upon it by the 
government. By this custom, the expenses of carriage were 
added to the tax, and the feeling of dependence was wan- 
tonly embittered. Functionaries who could deem them- 
selves at liberty to pursue such a course must have been 
an evil race to live under. In case of hardship in this form, 
or in any other, the Briton might appeal to the prefect ; 
and if justice did not come from that source, the next appeal 
lay to the emperor. But it is obvious that only the wealthy 
could carry their suit to that ultimate tribunal, and the 
wealthy among the Britons were few. 

Had it been possible to guard against such abuses, 
even the advantage to be derived from just laws justly ad- 
ministered may be too dearly purchased. In Britain, that 
political education of the people which comes naturally 
from the usages of self-government, was wholly wanting. 
The Britons were viewed too much as mere material to be 
used up in armies, or to be made as productive as possible 
in the hands of a revenue collector. But ruin is the natural 
issue of all governments based on such maxims. In general, 
if the governed are not found to possess sufficient energy 
to cast off the yoke, they perish from exhaustion — the 
governed in the meanwhile being destroyed by their vices. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 59 

Much land passed into the hands of the emperors by a book i. 

succession of confiscations, and more by their harsh custom 

of seizing on the property of all who died childless. It often 
happened that no man would take these government lands 
on the hard terms proposed, and in that case the little cul- 
ture bestowed on them was by forced, that is, by slave 
labour. The far greater part of the land, however, remained 
in the hands of the natives, but on conditions that were very 
onerous. The land-tax alone absorbed one-third of the net 
produce. Other taxes were levied in seaports, in all places 
of traffic, and in every man's home. For, besides the great 
tax on land, there were taxes on the sale of merchandize 
and of slaves, on mines, and on the person in the form of a 
poll-tax. Payments were also made to the government 
from all property left by will, and from all funerals. 

Only by imposing such burdens was it possible to sus- Koman 
tain so great an army as was generally stationed in this Britain, 
island. In the early times of the Roman ascendency in 
Britain, the army of occupation consisted of four legions, 
some 25,000 men, which, with the usual complement of 
auxiliaries, must have raised the settled force of the country 
to more than 50,000. The army in the field on some occa- 
sions could not have been less than 50,000, irrespective 
of the numbers distributed in the various stations. From 
the Notitia Imperii, the official record of the functionaries 
and forces of the empire about the close of the fourth 
century, we learn that the army in Britain consisted at that 
time of two legions in place of four, but the total force then 
may be reckoned as 32,700 foot, and 4800 horse, in all 
37,500 men.* The revenue adequate to sustain such a 
military establishment, and a civil establishment of corre- 
sponding magnitude, must have been great — much too great 
to have been furnished by the Britons, had not their con- 
dition been a great remove from barbarism. 

* Horsley's Britannia Romana, book i. chap. vi. ; book ii. chap, i., where 
the reader may find ample information on thia subject. 



CHAPTER IV. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 4. 

Druidism — 
Britain its 
chosen 
asylum. 



Its theocra- 
tic theory. 



CAESAR describes the religion of Gaul and Britain as the 
same. He further relates that the priests of Gaul who 
were desirous of becoming profoundly learned in the Druid 
lore, generally passed some time in Britain for that pur- 
pose.* The religion which the Celtic tribes brought with 
them from the East did not seek contact with other 
races, and coveted secrecy for the exercise of its more sacred 
rites. As this command of seclusion failed them in Gaul, 
they appear to have sought it in Britain ; and even here to 
have retreated from the more populous and exposed regions 
on its southern coast, to the interior of the country, and to 
some of its remotest solitudes, as in the island of Mona. 
But where there is secrecy there will be suspicion ; and the 
imagination of the classical writers has not failed to people 
the forest temples of the Druids with such forms of super- 
stition and cruelty as were supposed to be natural to those 
who covet darkness rather than light. Enough of super- 
stition and cruelty there was, but poetical inventions are of 
value only as poetry.f 

The name Druid is supposed to have been derived from 
the oak, which was an object of special veneration with the 
priests of Gaul and Britain.;}: We have seen that the laws 
of the Britons were deposited in the mind of the Druids, 
and administered by them. So that they were not only 
priests, but in effect both legislators and magistrates. In 
this fact their Oriental origin is clearly indicated. They 
were the ministers of a theocracy. So much were they 

* Bel. Gal. vi. 13. f Lucan. Phars. iii. 39 1. 

% Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 44 ; Diod. Sicul. lib. v. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 61 

venerated, that even peace and war, which seemed to be book i. 

* x Ciiap. 4. 

almost the only questions left purely to the authority of 

their kings, was a matter virtually under their control. 
The intervention of a Druid, we are told, was enough to 
stay the arm of combatants even when their rage was at 
the highest.* There were some distinctions of rank among 
them, and females were allowed to participate in the honours 
of the office. Besides the ordinary Druids, who attended 
to the usual priestly services, there appears to have been a 
limited class who were accounted the inspired persons — the 
minstrel poets and prophets of their order. The services 
of the Druids as priests and magistrates, and the fact that 
they alone possessed any knowledge of medicine, or of use- 
ful science generally, gave them command of a revenue 
which must have been large as coming from such a people. 
Above all, the spiritual power supposed to be vested in 
them was terrible. The body and soul, the present and the 
future, of the people for whom they ministered, were sup- 
posed to be in their hands. f 

There is no room to doubt that the Druids had, in The popular 
common with all the sacred castes of the East, their secret Dmidism. 
and their open doctrine. What the tenets or speculations 
were which might be divulged to none but the initiated, 
can be to us only a matter of conjecture. It is probable 
that they embraced traditionary conceptions, of a philosoph- 
ical and religious nature, much more elevated than the doc- 
trine taught to the people. In the popular doctrine, the 
future existence of the soul had a prominent place ; but it 
was a future existence in which the retribution came from 
the conditions through which the soul passed in a series of 
transmigrations. Not less prominent were the lessons of 
the Druid on the duty of worshipping the heavenly bodies, 
and a multitude of divinities to whom the attributes, if not 
the names, of the gods of Greece and Kome were ascribed. 
It is highly probable that the moral teaching of the Druids was 
comparatively pure, dscountenancing perfidy and violence, 

* Diod. Sicul. lib. v. c. 31. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4. 

\ Caesar, de Bel. Gal. vi. 13. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4. Pomponius Mela, de 
Situ Orbis, lib. iii. c. 2. Ammian. Marcel, xv. Diod. Sic. v. 



62 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



Sacred 
groves. 



book i, an( j inculcating good neighbourhood in the time of peace, 

no less earnestly than bravery and self-sacrifice in the time 

of war. Without high moral worth in some form, the 
Druids could hardly have been the object of so much vener- 
ation.* 

The oaks of Mamre served as a temple to the Hebrew 
patriarch. The shadow of the oak was the temple of the 
Druid. Among a people with whom large covered build- 
ings had no existence, there would be no such buildings for 
religious worship. To this fact, probably, more than to 
any lofty conception of the Supreme Being, we should at- 
tribute the Druid usage of worship in the open air, or 
beneath no other roofing than the overshadowing of ancient 
trees. But the secret places in these groves were as sacred 
as the recesses of any temple. These natural sanctuaries, 
with their dim religious light, had been planted, cleared, 
and cultivated so as to serve most of the purposes for which 
spacious buildings are raised ; and by the glimpses of them 
permitted on special occasions, not less than by their con- 
cealments, they were made to diffuse a religious fear over 
the mind of the multitude. Rude stones, dispersed in the 
form of avenues and circles, some of them adjusted in the 
cromlech shape, others so placed as to be altar-stones, were 
the only approaches towards architecture to be seen in these 
sacred inclosures. The stones so disposed were sometimes 
all but unhewn, as in the once famous temple at Abury in 
"Wiltshire. At other times they are reduced into shape by 
the tool of the workman, and raised into artificial structures 
by mechanical skill, as at Stonehenge. In the figures 
described by them there was no doubt a mystic significance, 
but on this subject our moderns have speculated to little 
purpose. "We should add, that the cause which made the 
Druid worship to be a worship without temples, made it to 
be a worship without images. In the history of bar- 
barous nations, the rudest conceivable sculpture has suf- 
fered to connect polytheism with idolatry. But the Druids 
were intelligent enough to see that their object would not 

* Caesar, de Bel. Gal. vi. 13. Mela, iii. 2. Pliny, xxx. 1. Diod. Sic. lib. 
v. c. 31. Amm, Mar. xv. 427. Cicero, de Div. i. 41. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 63 

be served by the aids of this nature within their reach. Their book i. 

instinct appears to have taught them that, in regard to such 

objects, remoteness and invisibility are better sources of 
impression.* 

It must be confessed that in these aspects of Druidism Druidic 

. ./> t ritual. 

there is something elevated and impressive, if compared 
with the systems which have obtained among many nations 
in the same stage of their history. The ceremonies, too, of 
the Druid worship, were not without their picturesque fea- 
tures. Their festivals were frequent, and celebrated with 
music and dancing, and choral hymns in honour of their 
divinities. In the month of August the grand ceremonial 
of cutting the misletoe from the oak took place. The chief 
Druid ascended the tree clothed in white, and severed the 
branch with a golden knife. Priests stood below with a 
large white linen cloth open to receive the branch as it fell. 
Two white bulls, fastened by their horns to the sacred tree, 
were then offered in sacrifice, and great rejoicings and feast- 
ings followed.f 

But the ritual of the Druids was not on all occasions of 
this comparatively harmless description. Their sacrifices 
rose in value with their sense of danger. Hence, in times 
of great public exigency, even human victims were offered, 
and these in great numbers. We have all seen in imagina- 
tion that colossal image of wickerwork, resembling the 
figure of a man, which was sometimes set up by them, the 
interior filled with human beings, that the whole might be 
consumed to ashes amidst the noise of instruments and 
shoutings, much in the manner of the suttee ceremonial only 
of late abolished in India4 

It is easy to see that the points of antagonism would be Specialr e. 
strong between such a system and the kind of rule con- of D?uidlsm 
templated by the Romans. It was inevitable that the sue- ject h of°the 
cess of the Roman power should prove fatal to that of the 



Komans. 



* Gen. xxxi. Tacit, de Mor. German, ix. Mona Antiqua, vii.-ix. Pliny, 
Nat. Hist. xvi. 44. Maxim. Tyr. Diss, xxxviii.. Lucan, iii. 412. 

f Plin. Nat. Hist. xvi. 44. Poland's Hist. Druids, 69-74. 

\ Caesar, dc Bel. Gal. vi. 16. Diodorus (lib. v. c. 31) and Strabo (lib. iv. c. 
4) both speak of the Druids as sometimes striking the man devoted to sacrifice 
•with their weapons, and as affecting to see future events in the throes of their 
victim. 



64 



CELTS AND KOMANS. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 4. 



Druids. So 



long 



as the two existed together, the people 



Introduc- 
tion of 
Christi- 
anity. 



were in the condition of being required to serve two mas- 
ters. The priests of most other countries, with more limited 
pretensions, might be tolerated, but here there could be no 
compromise. As we have seen, the Druid was not only a 
priest. He may be said to have made the law, and he ad- 
ministered it ; and the foe with whom he now had to deal 
could know nothing of such authorities in other hands than 
its own. No doubt the occasional cruelties of the Druid 
worship contributed, along with these causes, to the destruc- 
tion of the order. 

The fact that the Romans suppressed the religion of the 
natives — suppressed it with violence and bloodshed — would 
not dispose the Briton to look with favour on the religion 
of that people. "We do not find, accordingly, that the gods 
of Home ever became naturalized in this country. This 
might have happened if scepticism in regard to the claims 
of those gods had been less prevalent among their professed 
worshippers, and if the Roman ascendency in Britain had 
been more genial. The event shows, that the power which 
annihilated Druidism was to give Britain Christianity, and 
not another paganism. Not that anything of that nature 
was intended. But it was inevitable that the Roman roads 
should become lines of communication, facilitating the travel 
of all sorts of people, and of all sorts of news, from the most 
distant parts of the empire. So the way was opened for the 
entrance of the Christian faith. 

The pride of ancestry, rarely wanting in individuals, ex- 
ists invariably in communities. Nations which have not 
been able to discover a satisfactory origin for themselves, 
have spared no pains to invent one. Their beginnings as a 
people, and the beginnings of everything characteristic and 
honourable in their history, have been to them themes of 
interest on which they have bestowed no little embellish- 
ment. 

It would be pleasant to be able to assign the introduc- 
tion of Christianity into Britain to some very definite and 
very creditable source. But this Providence has not per- 
mitted. On this subject we possess abundance of fable. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 65 

beneath which it is often difficult to find the true residuum cha^ I' 
of history. 

The blow struck at the Druid power in Mona by Sueto- 
nius was decisive. The prophecies of that proud order had 
then come to nothing. The Britons had not prevailed. 
The gods in whom they trusted had not shielded them. 
The Druids had perished on their own altars. Their ene- 
mies had desecrated and destroyed their most sacred re- 
treats. In these facts were the seeds of change. 

The ground was thus prepared, but by what hand was Fictions 
the next seed sown ? The first preaching of the Gospel in ceptioTs 00 "' 
Britain has been ascribed to St. James, to Simon Zelotes, to the C int?o- g 
Joseph of Arimathea, and to the Aristobulus mentioned by Christ£° 
St. Paul. But all these narratives may be taken simply as am y ' 
so much illustration of that credulity, and love of fable, 
which distinguished the writers of the Middle Age, espe- 
cially the monks.* 

It has been maintained by some that Pomponia Grse- story of 
cina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, who was governor of Brit- Sn™ 1 
ain from a.d. 43 to a.d. 47, was a Christian. The facts which 
are supposed to warrant this opinion are the following. In 
Rome, in a.d. 56, Pomponia was charged with having em- 
braced some ' foreign superstition ; ' on that charge she was 
tried in the presence of her husband and was acquitted ; and 
subsequently, when a lady whom she tenderly loved had 
been treacherously put to death, she had a continual sorrow, 
and would never cease to wear mourning, f It will be seen 
that these facts furnish no evidence that Pomponia, the 
wife of Aulus Plautius in Rome in a.d. 56, had been his 
wife, and been with him in Britain in a.d. 45 ; nor any evi- 
dence that the foreign superstition which she was said to 
have embraced was Christianity. Her acquittal, and her 
continual sorrow, are evidence rather of a contrary nature. 
Had she been a Christian, she would hardly have failed to 
confess herself such ; and it was not the manner of Chris- 
tians in those days to sorrow as those who have no hope. 

* Stillingfleet, Origines Britannicce. Hasher, Britomnicarum Ecclcsiarum 
Antiquitatcs.. Henry, Hist. Eng. book i. c. 2. 
f Tacit. Annal. xiii. 

Vol. I— .5 



66 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 4. 



Of Claudia. 



Conjectures 
in relation 

to St. Paul. 



An attempt has been made to identify Pudens, a friend 
of Martial the poet, and Claudia, a British lady whom he 
married, with the Pudens and Claudia mentioned by St. 
Paul in his second letter to Timothy. But the mention of 
Pudens and Claudia by Paul is in a.d. 67 ; and the marriage 
of the Pudens and Claudia known to Martial, and who are 
described as then in the flower of their age, did not take 
place until twelve, it may be twenty, years later. In addi- 
tion to which, the Pudens and Claudia whose marriage the 
poet celebrates, were persons expected to be pleased with 
his invoking all the heathen divinities to be present with 
their usual benedictions on the occasion ; and the bride- 
groom at least is well known to have been a person not 
likely to be found cultivating the friendship either of an 
aged Christian apostle, or of a young Christian evangelist.* 

The only other names associated with the supposed intro- 
duction of Christianity into Britain entitled to notice, are 
those of St. Paul and King Lucius. 

In support of the claim of St. Paul, it is alleged that 
Tenanting Fortunatus, a Bishop of Gaul, and Sempronius, 
a Patriarch of Jerusalem, have both stated explicitly that 
this apostle preached the Gospel in Britain. But it is to be 
remembered that Fortunatus writes as a poet in the sixth 
century ; that the language of Sempronius is cited from a 
panegyric on the apostle delivered in the seventh century. 
Testimony coming so late, and from such sources, can be of 
no real value. But it is added that many other writers, 
some of them living two centuries earlier, assert that St. 
Paul preached the Gospel in the ' western parts ' — an ex- 
pression which was often used as comprehending Britain. 
Such expressions, however, were often used as not compre- 
hending Britain, or any territory near it. This testimony, 
accordingly, is too vague to be of any weight. It is further 
urged that there was an interval between the first imprison- 
ment of St. Paul in Rome, and his second imprisonment, in 
which he might have extended his labours to Britain, and in 



* Martial, lib. xi. ep. 13, 54. 2 Tim. iv. 21. Martial, it seems, was a man 
who could east ridicule on the sufferings of the Christians. — Paley's Evid. part i. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 67 

which it is probable he did, inasmuch as we do not find ^9^1 

him conspicuously occupied during that period elsewhere. 

Here, again, it is to be remembered, that the release of the 
apostle from his first imprisonment in Rome, appears to 
have taken place in a.d. 63 or 64, and his second commit- 
ment was in a.d. 67. But in a.d. 67 he wrote his second 
letter to Timothy ; and he there speaks of his having re- 
cently been at Troas, at Corinth, and at Miletum ; and of 
his having been occupied about affairs in Thessalonica, in 
Dalmatia, in Galatia, in Ephesus, and in Asia generally. It 
is scarcely too much to say, therefore, that it was not pos- 
sible that the apostle should have made a journey to Brit- 
ain in the interval between his first and second imprison- 
ment — and, of course, to prove the possibility in this case, 
would be by no means to prove the fact. Nor does it 
accord with our conception of a man who had a right to 
speak of himself as Paul the aged, to suppose that he added 
to all the occupations above indicated, in the short space of 
three or four years, the great labour that must have been 
incurred even to have made a hasty visit to this remote 
island.* 

Concernino- the story of Kins: Lucius, the statement of 

° i. . . Legend of 

Bede is, that he was ' Kino; of Britain ; ' that in the year King 

i i -rvi i • t-»- />t-» Lucius. 

a.d. 156 he sent a letter to Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome, 
praying that by his authority he might be allowed to pro- 
fess himself a Christian ; and that this pious wish being com- 
plied with, Christianity retained its footing in this island 
from that time.f Nennius, Abbot of Bangor, who is sup- 
posed to have written about the close of the seventh cen- 
tury, says that, in 'a.d. 167, King Lucius, Math all the Brit- 
ish chiefs, received baptism from the hands of. messengers 
sent by the Roman emperors, and by Pope Evaristus.'^: It 
would require large space to point out the strange confu- 
sions in history and chronology included in these brief state- 
ments. Whence Bede or Nennius obtained their informa- 
tion we know not. But here we have Lucius as ' King of 

* Stillingfleet, Antiquities. Cave's Lives of the Apost. ii. 290. 1 Tim. i. 
3 ; 2 Tim. iv ; Tit. i. 5 ; iii. 12 ; Acts xiv. xv. xviii. xix. 

f Bede, Ecdes. Hist. lib. i. c. iv. \ Hist. Brit. c. 18. 



68 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

chai? I" Britain,' leading ' all the British chiefs ' to baptism, at a 
time when the Romans had long since dispensed with the 
services of kings in this island, and when, if the very race 
had not ceased to exist, their being permitted to reign had 
come to an end. Here, too, we find the emperors of Rome 
taking upon them, in a.d. 167, to patronize Christianity, 
and, in conjunction with the Bishop, or rather the ' Pope' 
of Rome, sending forth legations of Christian priests to ac- 
complish the work of conversion among heathen men at the 
outposts of their empire ! That Pope Evaristus might be 
the favoured instrument in this memorable proceeding, it is 
contrived by Nennius that a man who had died in a.d. 109 
should be alive in a.d. 167. Bede, on the other hand, that 
he might assign this honour to Pope Eleutherius, makes that 
ecclesiastic to have been Bishop of Rome when he had still 
many years to serve in offices more humble. Gildas, our 
oldest British authority on British history, was a monk of 
Bangor, and lived in the middle of the sixth century ; but it 
is manifest, that of this marvellous story about King Lucius, 
Gildas knew nothing, nor of any story resembling it. Euse- 
bius, the careful chronicler of all such events, is in like 
manner silent. The fact is, that between the age of Gildas 
and Nennius, it had come to be regarded as a matter of im- 
portance that the clergy of the British churches, who had 
sought refuge in Wales, should be able to make out as good 
a claim to a Roman and apostolic origin as the clergy who 
had been sent by Pope Gregory to convert the Anglo- 
Saxons ; and this tale concerning Lucius appears to have 
been the fabrication of some British ecclesiastic, intended to 
meet this exigency, and to put the clergy of Wales upon as 
honourable a footing as their neighbours. In an age so little 
critical on matters of history, this was not a difficult work 
to accomplish.* 

But the question may still be asked — are we, then, left 

* The credulity even of such men as Ussher and Stillingfleet, in regard to 
the fictions which have obtained currency touching the introduction of Christian- 
ity into this country, is not a little surprising. The evidence which Ussher would 
have adduced from an Ancient coin, said to bear the sign of a cross, and to have 
the name of Lucius indicated in the letters L. U. C, has been shown by Mr. Hal- 
lam to be altogether fallacious. See the paper on this whole story in the Arche- 
ologia, xxxiii. 208 et seq. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 69 

without any knowledge as to when or how Christianity first book i. 
became known in this island ? Our answer to this question Th 7^ a 
is, that we may imagine the probable, where we cannot K ut ^ ^ 
attain to the certain. The known may be sufficient to war- ^ c r ^ n of 
rant highly reasonable conjecture as to the unknown. We ^"'Jf,.,. 
know that communication between Britain and the Con- tain - 
tinent became regular and settled in the apostolic age. We 
know also that before that age had closed, Suetonius had 
destroyed the power of the Druids. Through more than 
two centuries from that time Britain was in a state of com- 
parative tranquillity. The legions and auxiliaries trans- 
ported to this country often consisted of men who had been 
long resident in Gaul, and in other parts of the empire, 
where, before the end of the first century, Christianity had 
been widely propagated. Trade intercourse with this coun- 
try increased rapidly, and brought with it the usual inter- 
changes of thought. Christians in those days, moreover, 
were zealous in an extraordinary degree — as Pliny's letters 
to Trajan abundantly show — in endeavours to diffuse their 
doctrine. The Christian soldier made it a matter of daily 
talk with his comrades. The Christian merchant found oc- 
casion for discourse upon it amidst his buying and selling. 
The rich Christian taught it to his slave, and the Christian 
slave dared to speak of it to his master. Every Christian 
had his mission. His sacramental pledge had been, not 
only to hold the truth unto the death, but to endeavour by 
all available means to make it known to others. It is prob- 
able that the public teaching of Christianity was little 
known until these more obscure but earnest efforts had 
sufficed to bring very many to profess themselves Christians. 
Having resolved to annihilate Druidism, the concern of the 
Roman would naturally be that his own religion should 
come into its place. Hence any conspicuous mode of at- 
tempting to make proselytes to a new and unrecognized 
faith would be viewed with suspicion and discouraged. The 
first converts would probably be made in the colonies and 
towns, but the more open exercise of worship would take 
place in districts less subject to the eye of authority. It 
is to the jealousy of this authority that Ave are indebted for 



70 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

book i. our earliest authentic information concerning the Christian 

Chap. 4. _ o 

religion in Britain. 

o/Brithh 011 Towards the close of the reign of Diocletian the obscu- 
undwD^o- ri ty m wlrich the professors of the Gospel in Britain appear to 
cietian. have been content to remain was to continue no longer. 
The persecution which had dragged such men into fame in 
other provinces, for some years past, now began to do its 
work in this island. It is not. probable that Constantius, 
who had recently put an end to the usurpation of Carausius 
and Alectus in Britain, was a party to these proceedings. 
The blame rests, we have reason to think, on some subordi- 
nate who was disposed to gratify his love of rale by availing 
himself of the imperial edicts against the Christians — man- 
dates which had been disregarded under the late usurped 
authority. The account given by Bede is, that a man named 
Alban, residing at Yerulam, sheltered a Christian priest 
from the search of his persecutors, and that, being won by 
the holy demeanour of his guest, Alban became himself a 
Christian. So that, when soldiers came to demand that the 
priest should be delivered into their hands, Alban presented 
himself in the place of the man whom he had concealed, 
declaring himself a Christian. Of the miracles which gave 
their splendour to his martyrdom we need say nothing. 
But that there was a martyr at Yerulam of the name of 
Alban, who was afterwards canonized, and from whom the 
town of St. Albans derives its name, may be accepted as 
history. Bede relates, moreover, that many more, of both 
sexes, and in other places, suffered in like manner, and makes 
special mention of ' Aaron and Julius,' citizens of the ' Urbs 
Legionum' — that is, of Caerleon on the Usk — as having 
shown themselves faithful unto death.* 

Gildas, Orosius, and Bede all relate that this persecution 
having come to an end on the accession of Constantius, the 
father of Constantine the Great, the persecuted in Britain 
left their hiding-places in ' the woods and deserts, and secret 
caves ; rebuilt the churches which had been levelled to the 
ground, and raised many new edifices in honour of the 
martyrs.'f These descriptions seem to imply that before 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. i. c. 6, '7. \ Ibid. lib. i. c. 8. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 71 

the close of the reign of Diocletian the Christians in Britain c?ia? I'. 
must have been numerous, and have been possessed of con- 
siderable substance. 

Nine years after the close of the Diocletian persecution, British 
Constantino assembled the council of Aries, in which five ec- the council 
clesiastics are reported as present from Britain — three under 
the title of bishops, the fourth as a priest, the fifth as a dea- 
con. The first bishop was from York, the second from 
London, and the third probably from Lincoln. The whole 
number of bishops present from the western provinces, in- 
cluding Africa, was thirty -three. It is clear, therefore, that 
in the early part of the fourth century the worship and 
organization of the Christian communities in Britain had 
become so well known and settled, as to secure them a re- 
cognised place in the great Christian commonwealth of 
those times. "We may presume that the acts of the council 
of Aries were received as law by the Christians of Britain 
in the fourth century. The members of that council showed 
themselves careful to ensure that the men who ministered 
in holy things should be men of a blameless life, and that 
the privileges of the Christian fellowship should be restricted 
to persons whose lives were distinguished by Christian con- 
duct, and by fidelity to their profession. No bishop was to 
obtrude in the province of another bishop ; no bishop was 
to be ordained without the presence and concurrence of 
seven other bishops ; clergymen were not to be usurers, 
nor to be wanderers from place to place, but to be resident 
in the place in which they were ordained. Deacons were 
not to administer the eucharist. Among the persons to be 
suspended or excluded from communion were females who 
had married heathen husbands, charioteers in public games, 
actors in theatres, or clergymen who had betrayed their 
brethren, or delivered up the sacred books and sacred things 
of the church into profane hands in the times of persecution. 
No person who had once been baptised in the name of the 
Trinity was to be rebaptised. No person excommunicated 
by one church was to be received by another.* 

* Labbe, Concil. ed. Harduin. i. 



72 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



cnA^i" ^ ie Arian controversy began about a.d. 317. Eight 

)rth^y J ears later it led to the assembling of the memorable council 
fsh h ch^ r rc'h °f ^ ce ' Some of the Britons are said to have taken the 
heterodox side in this dispute. But if the infection existed, 
it must have been very partial and temporary. Athanasius, 
Jerome, and Chrysostom, all proclaim the Britons as faith- 
ful to the Nicene doctrine. The loose expressions of Gildas 
and Bede on this point must be judged in connexion with 
such facts.* 

Monasticism obtained root in Britain in the fourth cen- 
tury. And if the speculations of Pelagius, a monk of Ban- 
gor, might be taken as a sample of the intelligence of his 
order, we should be disposed to think favourably of the 
mental training to be realized in the monasteries of Britain 
in those days. Pelagius was a man of pure life, of consid- 
erable learning, of some ethical acuteness, and well ac- 
quainted with the leading ecclesiastics of his time, and with 
the affairs of the Church generally. Nor is there any room 
to doubt his sincere piety. His great antagonist Augustine, 
champion of orthodoxy as he was, is magnanimous enough 
to say of him, ' I not only loved him once, I love him still.' 
His errors are all of the kind most common in the history of 
opinion — the errors of reaction. Scandalized by the evils he 
saw resulting from a false dependence on ritualism, and on 
priestly service in the sacraments, and not less by the covert 
excuse for sin which had become prevalent among the ortho- 
dox under the plea of the moral inability of man, Pelagius 
laboured to give prominence to the moral and spiritual side 
of the Christian life, as embracing, a department of truth 
and duty which the Church was in clanger of forgetting or 
neglecting. But his halting-place was not the right one. 
Pressed by opponents, he learnt to deny that there is any 
inherent bias towards evil in man. Every man, he taught, 
has power from himself to obey the law of God ; and his 
salvation depends on the purity of his life, not on anything 
speculative or outward. In Christianity, as presented in 
the Scriptures, there is a transcendent teaching, and through 
it a divine influence comes to aid man in all moral and 

* Stillingfleet, Antiquities, 175. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 73 

spiritual effort. This is the substance and mission of the book i. 

Chap. 4. 

Gospel. It does not, he maintained, bring redemption or 

salvation in the sense commonly understood. In Celestius, 
a brother monk, who was also a native of Britain, Pelagius 
found a coadjutor, his equal in zeal, his superior, it is said, 
in the subtlety of his reasoning. By their joint labours a 
controversy was raised which agitated both the East and 
West for some time. 

It does not appear that either Pelagius or Celestius ever Preaching 
visited this island after the publication of their opinions had and oerma. 

, nus in Bri- 

made them notorious. Bede, however, relates that in a.d. 429, tain. 
the Pelagian doctrine had been so far embraced in Britain, 
that the native clergy became alarmed, and solicited help 
from their more skilful brethren in Gaul, whence the new 
doctrine had come to them. As the result, a number of the 
Gallic clergy came to Britain, with the bishops Lupus and 
Germanus at their head ; and these holy men, it is said, 
having filled the land with the fame of their miracles, so 
confuted the heretics, in the presence of great multitudes of 
people, that they were brought to confess their errors.* 

These events belong to the earlv part of the fifth centurv. Summary « 

T-.T • i • /> t» • • i -7 -i.i therevolu- 

By that time the natives ot Britain may be said, we think, tioninreii- 
to have abandoned their heathenism. Much of its influence ° 
no doubt survived, but the new faith had become ascendant. 
Great was the revolution in ideas, in dispositions, and in 
usages which this change involved. The Christianity pro- 
fessed may not have been of the most enlightened descrip- 
tion ; but it gave to the people of this country their first 
true conception of the Infinite, and it raised their thoughts to 
Him as to their Father through Christ. Humanity in Christ 
was before them as presenting the great manifestation of 
the Divine, the great pattern of the Human. Time was to 
develop the germ of intellectual and spiritual change in- 
cluded in this fact. "With this new object of worship came 
new views of human duty and of human destiny. The reign 
of horrors, so often shadowed forth in the rites of the Druid 
grove, was succeeded by the calm and benign influence of a 
Christian worship ; and this new apprehension of the Great 

* Eccles. Hist. i. c. vii. 



74r CELTS AND KOMANS. 

book l Parent of humanity was inseparable from a new apprehen- 
sion of humanity itself. It is thus that religious enlighten- 
ment comes to be one of the surest guarantees for enlighten- 
ment in regard to all feeling and all action. This revolu- 
tion in religion, long advancing in secret, became visible 
and consolidated in the fifth century. The new faith bid 
fair to leaven the entire mind of the country. Its effect on 
that portion of the British race which was to survive the 
approaching troubles was deep and permanent. The Brit- 
ons are no more known in history as pagans. Those of 
them who are found in the fastnesses of Wales after the de- 
parture of the Romans, and after the invasion of the Saxons, 
are Christian Britons, with a Christian hierarchy, a Chris- 
tian literature and a Christian civilization sufficiently strong 
to eradicate whatever remains of their old faith or usage 
may still have been left with them. All these acquisitions 
they must have carried with them into their mountain 
homes. There was no channel of communication through 
which they could have received them afterwards. "We have 
seen, however, that it is much easier to show that these ab- 
origines of Britain did really become Chrstians in those 
early times, than to say exactly when, or by what means, 
this revolution was brought to pass. 



CHAPTER Y. 

EFFECT OF THE EOMAN ASCENDENCY ON SOCIAL LIFE. 

AMONG the industrial arts, that of procuring the means book i. 
' l & Chap. 5. 

of subsistence is manifestly one of the most necessary — r~ 

t " m J Agneulturc 

and primitive. Barbarous tribes obtain their food, in a ™ n s the 
great degree, by hunting, fishing, and by expedients to en- 
snare animals. In the time of Caesar, the rudest inhabi- 
tants of Britain would seem to have passed considerably 
beyond that stage. Those who did not till the ground 
reared abundance of cattle. Many, especially in the country 
bordering on the southern coast, cultivated their lands with 
manure and with the plough, and were wont to supply 
themselves with corn and other products by such means.* 

It was the manner of the Romans to encourage agricul- 
ture in every country that became subject to their sway. 
The rich products of the East were soon naturalized to a 
large extent in the less favoured climate of the West. The 
vine, the olive, and many luscious fruits, such as the apricot, 
the peach, and the orange, passed from Italy into Spain and 
Gaul. Britain shared largely in these influences. The 
veterans who founded colonies became zealous cultivators 
of the lands which fell to their share, and taught the Brit 
ons, both directly, and indirectly, to excel in such labours.f 
In the fourth century the corn produced in this island was 
conveyed in large quantities to other provinces of the em- 
pire, especially to Gaul and Germany. Upon an emergency, 
in a.d. 359, more than eight hundred vessels were employed 

* Caesar, de Bel. Gal. v. 10-12. 

\ Scriptores Ret Rustlccc a Gcsncro, torn. i. 



76 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



in carrying grain from Britain to the Rhine.* Nor was it 
in the field only that the skill and industry of the British hus- 
bandman became visible. His vines, his trees bearing 
pleasant fruits, and his gardens generally, bore witness to 
the facility with which he could learn what his conquerors 
were prepared to teach.f Indeed, there is good reason to 
suppose that our agriculture was in a more prosperous state 
under the Romans, than at any subsequent period in our 
history during the next thousand years. 

Next to the need of food man feels the need of clothing. 
In the time of Caesar, many of the inland tribes of Britain 
had probably little better clothing that the shins of animals, 
their bodies being in great part naked. But we are not ob- 
liged to conclude that those skins were not prepared with 
some skill for their use ; and we Lave seen, that some cen- 
turies earlier, there were Britons known to the Phoenicians 
who wore garments of cloth.* At the commencement of the 
Christian era the Gauls produced woollen cloths of various 
textures, and could dye them of various colours. The man- 
ufacture of linen is aii advance beyond the manufacture of 
woollen; and this knowledge was familiar at that time to 
the Gauls. Scarcely anything of this nature could have 
been known in Gaul, and have been unknown to the Belgic 
settler.- in Britain.§ The costume of Boadicca is described 
as rich and queenly, and that of the men and women of 
distinction about her would bear some resemblance to it.| 
Ancient writers often speak of the Gauls and Britons as one 
people in regard to all such exercises of skill. Pliny 
describes the simple process by which the people of both 
countries managed to bleach their linens.^ 

The accounts which ancient writer.- have given of the 

' Ammianus Marcel, lib. xviii. c. 2. Zosimus, Hist, lib. iii. c. 5. 

| Script. Hist. August. 9-12. Tacitus, Vita Agric. \ii. 

\ Gsesar, de l'„l. Gal. v. if. Pomponius Mela, iii. c. Pliny, i^aA Hist. 
xiii. 11. Strabo, lib. iii. c. v. § 11. 

§ 'The Gauls wear the sagum, let their hair grow, and wear short breeches. 
Instead of tunics, they wear a slashed garment with slcrvcs, descending a little 
below the hips. The wool of their sheep is coarse, but long : from it they weave 
the thick saga called laines.' — Strabo, lib. iv. c. iv. § 3. Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. 
viii. c. 48, xxii. c. 2. Diodorus. 

I Xiphilin. in Nero. 

if Nat. Hist. xix. c. 1 ; xx. c. 19 ; xxviii. c. 12. 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 77 

ancient war-chariot, show that the useful arts must have chap. 5* 
been in an advanced state in Britain before the first Roman useful 
invasion. All these writers concur in praising the skill, and meat 
even the elegance, displayed in the construction and man- 
agement of these machines. It is clear, from what we know 
of the war-chariot, that there must have been Britons at that 
time who were good smiths, carpenters, and wheelwrights. 
Such men would be capable of building houses, and of 
producing furniture, after a manner unknown among 
nations in the lower state of barbarism. The scythes fas- 
tened to the axle of the chariot, and the weapons used by 
the warrior, bespeak considerable proficiency in the work- 
ing of metals.* Then there was the harness, which, rude 
as it may have been, must have been adapted to -its purpose 
by many arts that would have their value in many pro- 
cesses besides that of harness-making. We have abundance 
of evidence that the Britons of both sexes were disposed to 
a profuse use of ornament in dress. Gold was worn about 
the wrists and arms, and on the breast. The tore — a twisted 
collar for the neck — was often of that precious metal. Dur- 
ing more than two thousand years that ornament is known 
to have been in use among the Celts. The tore was a sym- 
bol of rank, and the numbers of them taken from the Gauls 
were often among the richest spoils of the Romans in their 
wars with that people. They are mentioned as among the 
trophies in the procession in which Caractacus made his ap- 
pearance.f Many of the trinkets found in the burial-places 
of the pagan Britons are of inferior substance. They are 
found in bronze, in amber, and in glass ; but those of more 
costly substance were in use. Many of these articles were no 
doubt imported, but many were native productions, and 
evinced the native skill. The comforts of home-life — 'the 

* The Gauls do not appear to have used the chariot in war. Some critics 
have come to doubt whether the British war-chariot was really scythed. But the 
evidence in favour of the common opinion on that point is not, I think, to be 
set aside. 

\ Titus Manlius, as we have all read, was named Torquatus, from the tore 
which he tore from the neck of a gigantic Gaul. Aneurin, the great Welsh 
bard, who wrote in the sixth century, laments the loss of several ' golden torcked 
sons ' in the memorable battle of Cattraeth. Some three hundred Britons who 
wore that mark of rank are said to have fallen on that day. 



78 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



BOOK I. 
Chap. 5. 



Causes un- 
favourable 
to civiliza- 
tion in 
ancient 
Britain. 



British 
earth- 
works. 



homestead, the furniture, and the food, could hardly have 
been obtained from a distance. 

There were, however, many causes which precluded the 
Britons before the age of Caesar from making all the provi- 
sion for their wants in this respect which they might have 
made. Britain in those early times was parcelled out be- 
tween many separate communities, who were almost per- 
petually at war with each other ; and the buildings of to- 
day were too often reared with the feeling that destruction 
might come upon them to-morrow. Caesar and Strabo 
indeed tell us that the Britons gave the name of a city to a 
collection of rude huts enclosed by a mound or stockade.* 
In the Britain which Caesar saw, the places of security were 
no doubt much of that description. But the strongest 
earthworks of the Britons, even in those days, were not in 
forests, but on high lands, wherever such lands were avail- 
able. Many of the positions thus chosen by them were 
afterwards occupied as beacon and military stations by the 
Romans, though the Roman encampment was required to 
be square, while the British works were always circular. 
This latter form, in many of the earthworks which remain 
over a large portion of the island to this day, demonstrates 
their early British origin, occupied and disturbed as they 
have often been since, not only by the Romans, but by Sax- 
ons and Danes. Of such works Caesar saw nothing. The 
Malvern Hills, Little Doward, Bass-church, and Silchester 
are among the localities remarkable for British works of this 
description. In the last-mentioned place there have been 
the traces of a town regularly mapped out, and enclosed with 
stone walls, which should be attributed, we think, on various 
grounds, to British skill before the invasion under Claudius. 
It should be remembered that the life of the Britons even to 
the time of this second invasion, continued to be to a large 
extent a herdsman's life ; and that these fortified places 
were not so much places of residence, as places of safety for 
themselves and their flocks in time of danger. Caesar him- 
self speaks of the houses he saw in Britain as resembling 



* Strabo, lib. W. Rowland's Mo?ia, 38, 39. Caesar, de Bel. Gal. iv. 12, 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 79 

those in Gaul. Now Gaul was not a country of wigwams. B00K: T - 

Chap. 5. 

It contained cities of considerable strength and beauty. 

Before the close of the first century, when the Romans had 
still their conquest to achieve in this country, London, as we 
have seen, had become a place of great traffic, and of many 
thousand inhabitants. Early in the second century, Ptol- 
emy makes mention of nearly sixty cities then existing in 
Britain. Some of these cities the Romans had created, but 
much the greater number consisted of Roman settlements 
fixed on British roads, and grafted on British towns. Ex- 
eter, for example, had been the capital — the place of gen- 
eral gathering, for the people of that part of Britain from 
the earliest time. It was thus almost everywhere. The 
old sites became the home of the new masters. In the in- 
terior and remote districts, the dwelling-places of our ances- 
tors at the time of the first Roman invasion, were no doubt 
for the most part of a very humble description. They were 
generally circular in form, constructed of wood, the spaces 
between the framework being filled up with mortar or clay, 
the covering being of reeds or thatch. The roof was of a 
cone shape, with an opening at the summit to. admit light, 
and to give egress to the smoke, the interior presenting a 
rounded apartment with its fire on the earth in the centre. 
Wretched as such hovels may be deemed, large portions of 
the subjects of great monarchies in modern Europe have 
been hardly better housed. Such erections as Stonehenge, 
through reared by Druids, evince a knowledge of mechanics 
which cannot be supposed to exist apart from much useful 
knowledge beside. The Avhole track of the Celtic tribes, in 
their migration from the east to the west, is marked by such 
monuments. The works of this nature at Abury in Wilt- 
shire are of greater extent than those of Stonehenge, and 
those of the temple of Carnac in Gaul were greater still.* 

* The following passages descriptive of the character and manners of the 
Gauls in the age of Caesar are no doubt applicable substantially to the Britons at 
that time : ' The entire race which now goes by the name of Gallic, or Galatic 
(Gauls), is warlike, passionate, and always ready for fighting, but otherwise sim- 
ple, and not malicious. If irritated, they rush in crowds to the conflict, openly 
and without any circumspection, and thus are easily vanquished by those who 
employ stratagem. For any one may exasperate them when, where, and under 
whatever pretext he pleases : he will always find them ready for danger, with 



80 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



BOOK T. 
Chap. 5. 



The aptness of the Britons to learn whatever Gaul, or Rome 
itself, could teach, is amply attested by Tacitus, whose in- 
formation must have come from the best authority — from 
the great Agricola.* 

But the settlement of the Romans, of course introduced 
both the useful arts and the embellishments of life, in the 
maturity which had then been given to them among the 
most civilized nations. The fraternities and corporations of 
weavers, and of other crafts, which were protected and pa- 
tronized by the Roman State, soon made their appearance 
in this country, as in the other provinces of the empire, and 
the artisans in Rome produced few articles of utility or lux- 
ury that were not also produced in Britain. Winchester 
was to the people of those times very much what Leeds and 
Manchester have since become to ourselves.f 



nothing to support them except their violence and daring. Nevertheless, they 
may be easily persuaded to devote themselves to anything useful, and have thus 
engaged both in science and letters. The most valiant of them dwell towards 
the north and next the ocean. Of these they say the Belgce are the bravest, and 
have sustained themselves single-handed against the Germans, the Cimbri, and 
the Teutons — their equipment is in keeping with the size of their bodies. They 
have a long sword hanging at their right side, a long shield, and lances in pro- 
portion ; together with a maclaris, somewhat resembling a javelin. Some of 
them ;:lso use bows and slings; they have also a piece of wood resembling a 
pilum, which they hurl, nut out of a thong, but from their hand, and to a further 
distance than an arrow. They principally make use of it in shooting birds. To 
the present day most of them lie on the ground, and take their meals seated on 
straw. They subsist principally on milk and on all kinds of flesh, especially that 
of swine, which they eat fresh and salted. Their swine live in the fields, and 
surpass in height, strength, and swiftness. To persons unaccustomed to approach 
them they are almost as dangerous as wolves. The people dwell in great arched 
houses, constructed of planks and wicker, and covered with a heavy thatched 
roof. They have sheep ami swine in such abundance, that they supply saga? and 
salted pork, in plenty, not only to Rome, but to most parts of Italy. Their gov- 
ernments were for tlie most part aristocratic. Formerly they chose a governor 
every year, and a military leader was always selected by the multitude. To their 
simplicity and vehemence the Gauls join much folly, arrogance, and love of orna- 
ment. They wear golden collars round their necks, and bracelets on their arms 
and wrists, and those who are of any dignity have garments dyed, and worked 
with gold. This lightness of character makes them intolerable when they con- 
quer, and throws them into consternation when worsted.' — Strabo, book iv. c. 4. 
Among the Britons, as we have seen, monarchy or chieftainship was hereditary, 
but in nearly all other respects the Belgoe and the Cantii were the same people. 

* Vita Agric. xxi. Gough's Camden, i. 141. Arelucologia, xv. 184. 
Horsley's Britannia Romana. Akerman's Archeeological Index, 44, 45. There 
are many remains of British earthworks in Oxfordshire, and more in Dorset. 
Cyclops Christianus. In the learned work with this title, Mr. Herbert attempts 
to show that the stone structures above mentioned are the work of Christian 
Britons after the departure of the Romans. But his case is by no means made 
out. 

f In all the Roman cities there were incorporations of operatives and arti- 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 81 

"With this new taste and skill in so many things, would ?, 00K 5 I - 
come new taste in matters of furniture and ornament. The „ 

Pottery. 

useful and the elegant in pottery were produced in great 
quantities in many parts of this island. Large traces of this 
branch of industry, dating from the time of the Romans, 
have been discovered in Kent, Northamptonshire, and else- 
where. The terra cotta produced by the same artists, was 
also in a beautiful style of workmanship. From the abun- 
dance of such remains on the sites of all the Roman stations ; 
and from other evidence, it is clear that the use of pottery 
was much more common among the Romans than it is 
among us. It is no longer to be doubted that ornaments 
from jet, or what is now called cannel coal, were produced 
in Roman Britain, and that our ancestors were familiar thus 
early with much skilful workmanship in glass. 

We find also that the Romans were by no means igno- Mines— 

... coa i — 

rant of the mineral treasures to be found in Britain. They metals. 

burnt coals on the banks of the Tyne and elsewhere in those 
old days. They amassed large wealth by working mines 
for iron, and lead, and tin, and copper ; and false hopes 
were sometimes raised by their coming upon a vein of sil- 
ver, and even upon gold. Their principal iron works were 
in the forest of Dean ; and in the forest of Anderida, now 
the Weald country of Sussex and Kent. The Roman coins 
often found in the scoriae of these deserted works, as well as 
the abundance of Roman pottery, determine the date and 
origin of such works. 

The Roman citizen disposed to make himself acquainted Koman 
with the island of Britain towards the close of the third cen- 
tury, would of course consult some Itinerary setting forth 
its principal towns and roads. Our modern railway-map 
gives us something very like the chart that would be placed 

ficers, answering very much to the trade guilds familiar to us in the later times 
of British history ; but these incorporations were known in law by the name of 
4 colleges.' These associations were intimately connected with religion, included 
a principle of caste, and have been variously described as fraternities and repub- 
lics. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that they should have been at times pro- 
hibited as politically dangerous^ — Palgrave, c. x. 331-335. See Horsley's Brit. 
Rom. 337-342, for evidence showing that colleges of this description were early 
introduced into Roman Britain. Du Cange, Gloss, voce ' Gynaecium.' Cod. 
Theod. iii. lib. x. tit. 20. 

Vol. I.— 6 



82 



CELTS AND ROMANS. 



ch2?5 L De f° re mm - The trunk lines of our new iron roads go to a. 
great extent along the track of the old military routes in 
Roman Britain. The cities and towns which form the 
termini of our main lines now, were most of them existing 
as terminating points then, and their names are only slightly, 
if at all changed. It is true the Romans generally con- 
structed their "roads in direct lines, crossing alike the hill 
and the valley. "Where such inequalities occur we now do 
our best to desert the old pathways. But the greater part 
of England is comparatively level ground. The road from 
Dover to London passed through Canterbury and Rochester 
in those days, as in later days. To leave London through 
the line of street now known as Bishopsgate, was to enter 
upon a road which sent off its branches to the Ilumber and 
the Tync, the Mersey and the Solway. Leaving London by 
the outlet now known as Ludgate, a smooth and safe road 
would be found open into Devonshire or South Wales, 
stretching from Gloucester to Shrewsbury, and striking off 
to St. George's Channel. Between these main lines were 
many branch lines, covering the whole land with a busy 
network of communication, connecting the greater cities 
with the population of the smaller town's and villages. 
Many of these roads passed through the dense forest, bor- 
dered on the stagnant marsh, pursued their arrowlike course 
across the desolate moorland, or opened to the wayfarer the 
sight of blue hills and rich valleys, full of beauty, and- of the 
signs of industry, wealth, and civilization. At short inter- 
vals along these roads, as on the banks of so many rivers, 
Roman stations made their appearance, with villas, and 
buildings of every description, clustered about them.* 

But the Roman villa supposes an advance in art beyond 
the barely useful. The humblest form of handicraft implies 
a measure of education and of mental development. But 
the social life of the Romans embraced that intellectual life 
which results from the direct and indirect influence ot 
science, letters, and general taste. To what extent were 
the Britons found capable of appreciating such refinements? 

* Horsley's Britannia Romana, book iii. Journal of the Archaiolopical 
Association,''!. 1-9; ii. 42,86, 164-169,324,339, 349. Wellbeloved's York 
under the Romans. Whitalier's Manchester. Moule's Essay on Roman Villas. 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. OO 

The Druids of Gaul and Britain, according to the testi- book i. 

' , ,° Chap. 5. 

mony of nearly all our earlier authorities in relation to clo ^"^~ 
them, were men who owed their position to their science fl u r e u ^ e in " 
and learning, even more than to their office as priests. They 
are described as being profound students in physiology, 
botany, medicine, and surgery ; in arithmetic, geometry, 
mechanics, and astronomy. They are even said to have ex- 
celled in geography. In these descriptions there is no 
doubt much exaggeration. But it is certain that the Druids 
affected to be in possession of extraordinary knowledge on 
all these subjects ; and that whatever they knew was mixed 
up with pretensions to supernatural powers, and made to 
subserve their priestly rule. Their knowledge, besides 
being thus misapplied, and of necessity limited, and mixed 
with much error, was always the knowledge of a separate 
order of men, if not of a caste. It came to the people, in 
consequence, only indirectly, and rarely as a real advantage. 
So that when the Romans swept away the Druids, and took 
the natives under their own guidance, they had to com- 
mence the education of their new allies, as regarded any 
knowledge of letters, from the beginning.* 

Tacitus describes the course given to the occupations and The fine 

° A arts — and 

tastes of the Britons towards the close of the first century, general 

° culture. 

To wean them from tendencies that were ever disposing 
them to acts of insubordination ' Agricola held forth the 
baits of pleasure, encouraging them, as well by public as- 
sistance as by warm exhortations, to build temples, courts 
of justice, and commodious dwelling-houses. He bestowed 
encomiums on such as cheerfully obeyed : the slow and un- 
complying were branded with reproach ; and thus a spirit 
of emulation diffused itself, operating like a sense of duty. 
To establish a plan of education, and to give the sons of the 
leading chiefs a tincture of letters, was part of his policy. 
By way of encouragement he praised their talents, and al- 
ready saw them, by the force of their native genius, rising 
superior to the attainments of the Gauls. The consequence 

* Strabo, lib. ii. 138 ; iv. 181, 197. Diod. Sic. ii. 47 ; v. 31 ; xii. 36. 
Mela, iii. 2, 12. Ammian. Marcel, xv. 9. Cassar, de Bel. Gal. vi. 13, 14. 
Brucker, Hist. Philos. i. 314-316. Rowland's Mona, 84. 



BOOK I, 
Chap. 5. 



84 CELTS AOT> KOMANS. 

was that they who had always disdained the Roman lan- 
guage began to cultivate its beauties.'* 

This scheme of education, to be sustained by the funds 
of the State, and to be controlled by that authority, was in 
accordance with the edicts and usages of the empire. Such 
establishments existed in the principal cities of every pro- 
vince. The design was to impart such a spirit and com- 
plexion to the educated life of every community subject to 
the sway of Home as should be favourable to that sway. In 
such schools the youth of Britain studied the language and 
literature of Home, and became familiar with science and 
art as known at that time to the Roman citizen. So pre- 
valent did the use of the Latin language become, that Gil- 
das speaks of the native tongue as having become almost ob- 
solete. But this statement must be received with great lim- 
itation. The Latin tongue never rooted itself among the 
Britons as it did among the Gauls. Brittany was the only 
province in Romanized Gaul that retained the Celtic tongue ; 
and there it was preserved mainly through the influence of 
settlers from this country. The traces of the Latin language 
which survived in Britain after the departure of the Ro- 
mans were small. In the Roman settlements, and in their 
immediate neighbourhood, the fact no doubt was as Gildas 
has stated. In such districts the Latin was the lamniaire 
generally spoken. In their costume, their houses, their 
amusements, and even in their religion, the British in such 
places almost ceased to be British. Of the mansions, the 
villas, the porticos, the baths, the temples, the theatres, and 
other structures which adorned such localities, fragments 
only remain. The long centuries of barbarism and violence 
which followed were not favourable to the preservation of 
such monuments. Vestiges, however, from the wreck of 
that epoch of civilization in our history, may be seen in 
every museum, and are excavated almost daily from the 
sites on which it flourished. 

The reader who has seen Pompeii, or who has a just con- 
ception of that place from representation, may judge, with- 

* Vita Agric. xxi. 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 85 

out fear of mistake, concerning the appearance of the Ro- book l 

man houses and cities in Britain. The walls of the towns 

were of substantial and enduring masonry, rarely less than 
ten or twelve feet in thickness, and generally from twelve 
to fifteen feet in height. At given distances they were 
strengthened with round and projecting towers, and the 
gates appear to have been of wood, braced in various ways 
with iron. To a modern, the streets would seem narrow, 
the houses diminutive ; but the entire space included with- 
in the walls was not great. Even the walls of Colchester 
included little more than a hundred acres, those of Kenches- 
ter about twenty, those of Lymne twelve, those of Richbor- 
ough only four. It is probable that London itself did not 
then consist of more than three or four streets broad enough 
for wheels, those being the streets which led to the great 
outlets ; but from which there branched off numberless 
lanes and alleys, as paths only to persons on horseback, 
or to foot-passengers. This sense of smallness is felt, we 
presume, by every one who visits Pompeii, unless prepared 
for its inspection by more than usual preliminary study. 
But if the general scale of things in one of our Roman cities 
would be deemed contracted, the ornament in the houses of 
the wealthy would be regarded as profuse, and the conve- 
niences, in the way of apparatus for warming, for baths, and 
the like, would be accounted extraordinary, as found within 
such limits. You see the floors covered with tesselated 
pavement ; the walls frescoed with decorative paintings. 
The window-frames are filled with glass. The ceilings are 
rich in colouring, and in elaborated workmanship. The 
furniture is, for the most part, elegant and ornate. Alto- 
gether, the interior is sucji as would be seen in the houses 
of the wealthy in Italy, and in Rome itself. Of course the 
owners of such residences were not often natives, nor always 
Italians. Such houses were mostly the homes of military 
men, of government functionaries, and of successful mer- 
chants and landholders from all parts of the empire. 

One of the most memorable seats of Roman opulence influence of 

• t» »j • n -i ., . TT1* the Roman 

and taste m Britain was CaerJeon, on the river Usk, in cities. 
Monmouthshire. Caerleon stood at a good centre point in 



86 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

chap" 5' re l a ti° n to the large territory of the Silures. On that spot, 
the bravest and the most powerful of the British tribes, sub- 
dued by the sword, were to be further subdued by the fas- 
cinations of art. According to the descriptions of Giraldus 
Cambrensis, the Roman antiquities on the site of Caerleon 
even so late as the twelfth century, must have been of as 
great magnitude as the ruins which have marked the site of 
Athens in our own time.* What Caerleon was to the Si- 
lures in the west, York was to the Brigantes, the great na- 
tion of the north ; and Colchester and St. Albans stood in a 
similar relation to the Iceni, and to the other native tribes 
of the east and south. Between these great points, as we 
have seen, the land was studded with cities or stations ; all 
of which exhibited, on a larger or a smaller scale, the same 
signs of civilization and wealth. 

When Christianity had gained a place among the Brit- 
ons, a new field was opened for the development of the tastes 
thus acquired. The learning of Pelagius and Celestius — 
British scholars known wherever the Latin language was 
spoken — was derived, we must suppose, from those public 
schools which the Romans had founded. In this manner 
the civilization of Rome, no less than its sword, was made 
to operate in favour of the Gospel. Christianity commends 
itself to intelligence and culture. Wherever it is to live, it 
must either find a soil of that nature, or create it. 
change in Such changes would, of course, affect the manners of the 

the manners ° f 

of the Britons. In this respect they had differed little from tribes 

Britons. ... 

in the same condition. While the greater part of the island 
was uncleared and undrained, the wild Indian sort of life 

* Itiner. Camb. lib. i. c. 5. Caerleon is situated on the right hand of the 
Usk, which winds in considerable breadth an<J force through a rich valley. Two 
miles lower down, the river passes the now prosperous town of Newport, whence 
it widens rapidly, and soon discharges itself into the Bristol Channel. The land 
as you ascend the river to Newport is level, but as you approach ' the City of the 
Legion,' the valley is seen to be enclosed by a crescent of beautiful hills. The 
loftiest of those hills, on the Glamorganshire side of the valley, bears the name 
of Twymbarlwm (Tymbarlum). On that elevation there was a strong Roman 
encampment, which could hold easy communication with the powerful garrison 
on Campdown, on the opposite side of the Channel, and indeed with the whole 
extent of country from the Malvern Hills to Swansea. Of the antiquities of 
Caerleon the only indication now above ground is a rich basin-formed meadow, 
which marks the site of the old amphitheatre. There is, however, in the modern 
town, a neatly built museum, containing a good collection of antiquities from the 
ancient city. 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 87 

which would be natural to many of the inhabitants may be book i. 
imagined. But the more organized and settled communities 
had certain usages and characteristics in common. An an- 
cient historian speaks of the Cornish Britons as being plain 
and simple in their manners, as wholly free from the craft 
and fraudulence so commonly found among the more civil- 
ized tribes of those times.* Tacitus, speaking of the Brit- 
ons as the Romans had found them down to his time, says : 
' They are willing to supply our armies with new levies ; 
they pay their tribute without a murmur ; and they per- 
form all the services of the government with alacrity, pro- 
vided they have no reason to complain of oppression. 
When injured, their resentment is quick, sudden, and im- 
patient ; they are conquered, not broken-hearted ; reduced 
to obedience, not subdued to slavery.' f 

Our rude ancestors had, as will be supposed, their sea- 
sons of festivity, when the song, the lyre, and the dance con- 
tributed to their enjoyment. On the occasion of a marriage, 
or the successful issue of a war, and at given periods of the 
year, pleasure in these forms returned. Considerable change, 
we may be sure, came over their usages in this respect when 
they fell under the sway of the Romans. Their wars among 
themselves then came to an end. Many of them also be- 
came Christians, and by such, pagan customs would be 
wholly, or in great part, abandoned. 

Concerning the domestic habits, and the general morals ^Briton* 
of the Britons, our opinion will be very low if we credit one "cusatkm. 
statement made by Caesar. According to this historian, the 
male members of a family, however numerous, had their 
wives in common, and the children borne by a wife passed 
for the children of her accredited husband.^ It may be 
questioned, however, whether Caesar had such knowledge 
of the Britons as to warrant him in making this statement. 
He could only have made such a report from hearsay ; and 
we have no means of knowing what that hearsay was really 
worth. We doubt if it was even partially true. The con- 
clusion may have been a hasty inference from appearances 

* Diod. Sic. lib. v. c. 21. 
f Vita Agric. c. xiii. \ Be Bel. Gal. v. 14. 



88 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

cha?5 L ^at S ^ 0U ^ n °t have been so interpreted. Tlie evidence 

which may be adduced as justifying scepticism on this point 

is various and considerable. 

It is well known that chastity in women, is in general 
rigorously exacted by men in rude states of society. Even 
among barbarians, there are natural instincts which operate 
as powerful safeguards in such relations — especially in a 
latitude like ours. Tacitus furnishes strong evidence to this 
effect in his account of the ancient Germans. It is Caesar 
himself, moreover, who states that the Britons differed in 
scarcely anything from the Gauls ; and among the Gauls, 
from whom the Britons derived their blood, their language, 
their religion, and their customs, no trace of any such usage 
is found. It is certain, also, that women among the Britons 
were held in high estimation. They shared in the honours 
of priesthood. The highest gifts pertained to them — inspi- 
ration, prophecy, the power of working miracles.* Females, 
when next in succession, became sovereigns, as we see in the 
case of Boadicea. Should a reigning queen take to herself 
a husband, she did not cease to be the possessor of the su- 
preme power ; as we see in the history of Cartismandua, 
the queen of the Brigantes. It was the wrong done to the 
chastity of the daughters of Boadicea that filled the cup of 
indignation among the Britons to overflowing. We further 
learn from Tacitus, that it was the scandalous proceeding of 
Cartismandua in marrying beneath her rank, that helped to 
produce such disaffection among her subjects as to compel 
her to fly to the Romans for protection. To these consid- 
erations, and more of the same complexion, we have to add 
the material fact, that this charge against the Britons rests 
on the authority of Caesar alone.f 

* Pomponius Mela, iii. 2. 

f It should be added, that the literature of the Welsh, especially their eccle- 
siastical literature, goes far back in their history, and there is not a word in their 
laws, their traditions, or any of their writings, implying that any such custom 
had ever to be rooted out from among them. Neither Diodorus nor Strabo 
make any mention of this alleged usage, though both were familiar with what 
Caesar had written. There is a passage, indeed, preserved from Dion Cassius, 
who wrote more than two centuries later, in which a British female is made to 
say, in defence of her countrywomen, that they only did openly with their 
equals, what the Roman ladies did secretly with their inferiors. But this is not 
Cajsar's story ; and even this may be more safely interpreted as an ingenious 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 89 

The Britons of both sexes who were in familiar inter- book i. 

Chap. 5. 

course with the military officers, the civil functionaries, and 

the wealthy settlers in this country, could hardly have been 
persons of the manners which the custom described by the 
Roman general would suggest. The children from the fami- 
lies of the opulent, whether Britons or Romans, grew up 
together in the same public schools. The parents, too, of 
both classes, often shared in common in the pomp and ban- 
queting which took place in every Roman settlement, much 
as in Rome itself. We can easily imagine that the descend- 
ants of Caractacus were wont to meet the successors of 
Ostorius at the same board in the halls of Caerleon. In 
Verulam, in Richborough, in Lincoln, in York, times came 
round for such gatherings. The effect of this intercourse 
on the manners of the Britons is a matter of history. They 
did not fail to appreciate the refinements of their conquerors. 
They were only too willing to give themselves to such pleas- 
ures, and thus fell but too readily into the snare which had 
been laid for them. It is of a comparatively early stage in 
the revolution in taste and manners thus brought about 
that Tacitus writes in the following terms : ' The Roman ap- 
parel was seen without prejudice, and the toga became a fash- 
ionable part of dress. By degrees the charms of vice gained 
admission to their hearts ; baths, and porticos and elegant 
banquets grew into vogue ; and the new manners, which, in 
fact, served only to sweeten slavery, were, by the unsuspect- 
ing Britons, called the arts of polished humanity.'* 

Such was the course of change, for better and for worse, summary. 
which came upon social life in Britain through the ascend- 
ency of the Romans. Some of the great men who con- 
quered for Rome persuaded themselves that their con- 
mode of rebuking licentiousness in Rome, than as presenting a trustworthy re- 
port of what was really taking place in Britain. So Tacitus aimed to shame the 
degenerate Romans, by giving his own colouring to the manners of the Germans. 
Xiphiline, indeed, attributes the usage imputed to the Britons by Caesar, to the 
Caledonians in the time of Severus ; but this is mentioned as a feature of the 
barbarism which distinguished that people, and so as to imply that such was not 
the custom of the Britons generally. We do not think, however, that it was the 
usage of the ancient Caledonians any more than of the ancient Britons. The 
abbreviator of Dion Cassius is not a sufficient authority on this point, taken 
alone. 

* Vita Agric. xxii. 



90 



CELTS AND KOMANS. 



BOOK I. 
CnAp. 5. 



Bummary. 



quests were on the side of humanity ; and some who ruled 
in the name of that power believed that they were ruling to 
that end. But these larger and purer purposes of the wise, 
were sadly counteracted by the narrow and selfish policy of 
the unwise. The system, indeed, when once consolidated, 
remained the same. But despotic authority, under the 
names, and under some of the forms, of liberty, was at its 
centre ; and the administrations related to that centre took 
their complexion from the character of the man who hap- 
pened to be enthroned there. The sway of virtuous princes 
secured comparative tranquillity and happiness to more than 
a hundred millions of people. But such intervals of pros- 
perity were only intervals. With the feeble and vicious 
ruler came the evils to be expected from such rule. On the 
whole, the condition of affairs in Roman Britain was fair 
and imposing on its surface, but hollow beneath. Corrup- 
tion in Rome never failed to become the parent of corrup- 
tion in all its dependencies. The distinctions of rich and 
poor obtained in some degree among the Britons even in 
their vanquished state. The arts of peace came into the 
place of the calamities of war. But even that change may 
not be a change for the better. What is gained in quiet 
and comfort, may be gained at a serious loss to virtue and 
manhood. By this process, the fidelity, the courage, and 
the national spirit, which had characterized the Britons in 
their rude state, were all deeply impaired. The men of sub- 
stance were flattered, baited with pleasure, and rendered 
harmless by such means ; and while the industrious fur- 
nished the conqueror with a revenue, the adventurous were 
made to replenish his armies in distant provinces. Such 
was the general policy of Rome. Britain was used so long 
as it could be used, and was abandoned when it could be 
used no longer. It had been civilized into helplessness, and 
it was then left to its fate. 

But retribution followed in the wake of this policy. In 
the history of the Roman power, an army of mercenaries 
came by degrees to be the only instrument by which that 
power could be maintained ; and so, as might have been 
foreseen, the empire passed into the hands of that army. 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 91 

During four centuries of comparative poverty and hardship, book L 

Eoine had grown wonderfully in her capacity both for con- 

quest and for government. During the next three centuries, 
her authority was gradually extended over the three con- 
tinents of the known world. In the centuries which follow, 
we see everything once distinctive of republican Rome be- 
come common to her world-wide provinces. We see the 
empire become the possession, either by accident or pur- 
chase, of some of the meanest and most wicked of mankind ; 
and we have to look, for the greater part, on enterprise 
without greatness, on splendour without reality, and on 
tranquillity which proves to be the tranquillity of decay. 

There is a majestic unity, a scientific grandeur, about 
the Roman law and its administration, which is apt to fas- 
cinate the imagination of some men. The fault we find 
with the Roman civilization is, that it gave the mind no 
object of public interest, and so did nothing to ensure that 
progress of thought, and that development of moral feeling, 
on which all true civilization must rest. In judging con- 
cerning civilization, we have to look first to the individual 
man, and to the amount of intelligence and virtue possible 
to him ; and we have then to look to what society would be 
where all should be thus enlightened and thus moral. In pur- 
suing this track of thought, the immediate effect must be, 
to feel how far the most civilized communities are from 
being really civilized. Nevertheless, here is the true con- 
ception of civilized life. It is real, in the measure in which 
it ensures intelligence and virtue to society, by ensuring it 
to the individuals of whom society is composed. It presents 
man at his best. All social tendencies are good but as they 
work towards this result. Tried by this test, the Roman 
civilization is lamentably wanting. Over persons and over 
provinces — over its great world, its tendencies were to de- 
press thought to one dead level, to shut in virtue to one dull 
routine, to dwarf and deform humanity rather than to 
elevate and perfect it. It told men they were at liberty to 
buy and sell, to get gain and to enjoy, on any scale. If 
more intellectually disposed, they might study antiquities, 
speculate in philosophy, become artists or poets ; but they 



92 CELTS AND ROMANS. 

book i. must not presume to know anything about state matters. 

They must have no country, no dreams about patriotism or 

liberty. They must accept the imperial wisdom as always 
infallible, and never venture to question any of its proceed- 
ings. All the nobler aspirations of their nature must exist 
only to be checked, subdued, and to produce that sense of 
stifled nature, of heart-sickness, which a generous man so 
suffering can alone comprehend. Nor was escape possible 
except by flying to the outposts of barbarism, and conform- 
ing to a life worse than death. The sphere of this deadly 
pressure was not that of a nation only. It embraced the 
world. It clutched its victims everywhere. Overshadowed 
by such a power, even the things which were told that they 
might live, could not live. Despotism is a form of treason 
against humanity, and it is a law of nature that humanity 
shall never serve it with its best. 

Modern civilization has no doubt derived some advan- 
tages from the Roman laws, especially from those munici- 
pal laws which left to the cities of the empire some sem- 
blance of freedom when it had wholly disappeared else- 
where. But England owes really nothing to that source. 
Our laws are all from ourselves. They were born with us, 
and they have lived and grown with us. From the period 
we have now reached, the civil power of Rome ceases to 
have any connexion with English history. Its days are 
numbered. It is soon to be no more, 
rhe Bntons But the Britons in the meanwhile are not to become ex- 
!onquerors! r tinct — are not to decay. Schooled by adversity, and ele- 
vated by the Christian influences which have taken root 
among them, they are to become intelligent, moral, devout, 
and are to be a people characterized by industry, and by 
high comparative virtue and hapniness, when some fourteen 
centuries shall have passed away. One of the earliest of 
those national sayings which show the kind of life this peo- 
ple were destined to live, is — ' Esteem the man who looks 
with love on the countenance of nature, on the works of 
art, and on the face of the little child.' The spirit of reli- 
gion and of poetry remains with this people ; and if the 
question be asked, What are the qualities essential to the 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 93 

true poet ? — the answer from the same remote past is : ' An b °ok i- 

. . t . Chap. 5. 

eye to see what is m nature, a heart to love it, and courage 

to follow it.' Instruction in his triad form is so old anions 
the Britons, as to have been known to very ancient writers, 
both Latin and Greek, as the pages of Pomponius Mela and 
Diogenes Laertius show.* 

It will be proper to state in this place, that the effect of ^EomL 
the conquest by the Romans, and of the system founded themstri- 01 
upon it, was of a kind to leave very unequal traces of the ]^ c " on of 
British tongue, and of the British people, over the surface 
of the country. The chain of mountains stretching from 
the Highlands of Scotland into Derbyshire, sometimes called 
the English Apennines, divides that portion of the island 
into two great sections. The slopes of these mountains de- 
scend on the one side towards St. George's Channel, on the 
other towards the German Ocean. The eastern side of this 
great watershed embraces the level and rich lands between 
the Humber and the Forth, and over that space the traces 
of the past are very conspicuously Roman. But from the 
vale of Strathclyde, embracing a large tract of land in 
Dumbartonshire, from Cumberland, the old land of the 
Cumry, and along to the southward through Westmoreland, 
Lancashire, and the border counties of Wales, into Devon- 
shire and Cornwall, the natives remain more thickly on the 

* Lord Macaulay, in my humble judgment, greatly underrates both the Brit- 
ish and the Saxon periods in our history. His sympathy with his subject can 
scarcely be said to begin until the Norman chivalry makes its appearance among 
us. I select two instances from a single paragraph, in illustration of the remark 
which I have felt bound to make. 

His lordship says that the inhabitants of Britain, ' when first known to the 
Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives of the Sandwich Islands.' — 
Vol i. 4. Our earliest knowledge of the Britons from Tyrian sources describes 
them as comparatively civilized in their manners, as fond of strangers, as indus- 
trious, as skilful in working mines, as wearing tunics of cloth descending to the 
feet, as just in their dealings, and as possessing herds of cattle. (See p. *7.) Is 
this a picture of the Sandwich Islanders as discovered by Captain Cook ? 

His lordship further says : ' Of the western provinces which obeyed the 
Caesars, she [Britain] was the last that was conquered and the first that was flung 
away.' — Ibid. This may be true, and the conclusion which the antithesis tends 
to convey may be untrue. The remote and isolated position of this country 
made it the most difficult to reach while Rome continued strong, and the most 
difficult to retain when Rome had become weak. Some rich provinces in the 
east were acquired later, and flung away sooner. — Gibbon, vol. i. c. i. 

It is deeply to be regretted that the value of the most wonderful narrative 
this wonderful age has produced, should be so often impaired by strokes of 
rhetoric of this sort. 



94 CELTS AND KOMANS. 

book i. ground, and have given the impress of their language 

more generally to the objects which have survived them. 

The great northern line of road in those days, was not so 
much on the Lancashire as on the Yorkshire side of the 
Yorkshire hills, passing through Leicester, Lincoln, York, 
and Newcastle. This is one of the facts concerning the dis- 
turbance, and the new distributions of race, consequent on 
the settlement of the Romans in Britain, which contribute to 
explain some later facts in our history. The Britons of 
Cumberland and Cornwall were linked together by the Si- 
lures, whose territories extended through Cheshire and 
Shropshire down to the "Welsh side of the Bristol Channel. 
In the western half of the island, thus marked off for the 
most part by mountains or rivers from the eastern half, the 
Britons have never been more than partially displaced. 
Over this surface they have been largely amalgamated with 
other races ; first with the settlers who came in with the 
Romans, and afterwards with Saxons and Danes. On the 
more southern and eastern side of the island, the blood 
which prevailed, even in the Roman period, was much 
more the blood of the stranger, or of a mixed race. 



BOOK II. 

SAXONS AND DANES. 



CHAPTER I. 



SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY. 

CJ23AR, the greatest of generals, and Tacitus, the great- book ii. 
est of historians, have been our chief authorities in rela- 

tion to Eoman Britain. More than a hundred Continental 
writers belonging to the first four or five Christian centuries 
have supplied fragments of information concerning this 
island. But many of those references are very brief, and 
of small value. Our best guides, next to Csesar and Taci- 
tus, have been Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Dion Cassius. 
Other lights have crossed our path at intervals, but made 
no stay — and now that we are about to pass from the 
Roman period to what was to follow, the twilight deepens. 

For our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon history we depend ™™ c e es of 
on three sources — on British writers ; on the heathen poetry g^°" his . 
and traditions of the north of Europe ; and on the Christian tor y- 
literature of the Saxons in Britain after they were convert- 
ed. 

Welsh historv is bv no means so barren a theme as is British au- 

, -r, . , i t i thorities. 

commonly supposed. But it does not throw much light 
on the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The work published 
under the title of Annals of Wales is one of the most 



96 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B c°ha? F" mea o re productions imaginable. Under some years there 

is no entry, and down to 1066 the average for each year 

does not exceed half a line. This scantiness may be evi- 
dence of antiquity, "but it is an antiquity that yields nothing, 
or next to nothing. The Chronicle of the Princes is fuller, 
more like the Saxon Chronicle, but it does not commence 
before the year 681, and its references to anything passing 
beyond the Welsh territory are few. The Chronicle of Ca- 
radoc is copied from the above, with some traditionary mat- 
ter intermixed.* From these last sources, and still more 
from what is now known concerning the laws and institu- 
tions of the "Welsh in times before the Conquest, a much 
more favorable conclusion than is generally adopted may 
be arrived at in regard to the civilization of that people. 

It will appear, as we proceed, that Anglo-Saxon Britain 
may be said to have been subject to the last, not only to a 
difference between Danish law and Saxon law, but to three 
distinct codes of law — the laws of Northunibria, of Mercia, 
and of Wessex being in many respects different from each 
other. So it was in those days with the Britons. There 
was the Yenedotian code for North Wales, the Dimetian 
code for South Wales, and the Gwent code for the south- 
east portion of that territory. The laws of the Celts on 
the western side of the Severn and of Offa's Dyke, had 
much in common ; but they had also their differences, and 
it was thus with the Teutons on the eastern side of that 
line. The best known of these old British codes is that of 
Howell the Good. It may be traced to the first half of the 
tenth century. But it was itself, as may be imagined, a di- 
gest from laws and usages much more ancient, f 

In these ascertained laws and institutions of Wales there 

* Ancient Laws and Institutes of England. Folio. 1841. 

f ' Howell the Good, son of Cadell, prince of Cymru, summoned to him six 
men from every cantrev (one hundred townships) in all Cymru, to the White 
House on the Tav, in Dyved, and those of the wisest men in his dominion ; four 
of them laics, and two clerks. The cause for bringing the clerks was, lest the 
laics should introduce what might be contrary to Holy Scripture. 

' And they examined the laws : such of them as might be too severe in punish- 
ment, to mitigate ; and such as might be too lenient, to render more vigorous. 
Some of the laws they suffered to remain unaltered ; others they willed to amend ; 
others they abrogated entirely ; and they enacted some new laws.' — Ancient Laws 
and Institutes of Wales, book iii. c. i. 



SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY. 97 

is much to interest the historical student. He will possibly B ° 0K ?■ 

1 •> Chap. 1. 

be surprised to see how a people accounted so rude contriv- 

ed to place restrictions on the royal power, to distinguish 
between the legislative and executive functions of a state, 
and to leave as little as possible in the administration of 
law to the discretion of the magistrate. Not less unexpect- 
ed, perhaps, will be the evidence of the care taken to deter- 
mine the limits between governing and governed ; to define 
the duties of husband and wife, parent and child, master and 
servant ; to classify offences ; to settle principles of evidence, 
and to adjust penalties to offences ; to ensure a sober main- 
tenance to the ministers of religion ; to encourage com- 
merce ; and to confer honour on gifted, learned, and scien- 
tific men.- 

All these seeds of civilization were in their course of de- 
velopment among the Britons, from the times when the 
greater number of them retreated westward. But many did 
not so retreat, and Anglo-Saxon history was to be affected 
considerably by these facts. The British writers, however, 
to whom we owe most in relation to English history, are 
Gildas, Nennius, Asser, and, we suppose we must add, 
Geoffrey of Monmouth. 

There were three writers of the name of Gildas, who Gildas - 
were contemporaries, or nearly so. The author of the his- 
torical work under that name was a monk of Bandon, in 
North "Wales. He appears to have become thoroughly Ro- 
manized in his tastes, and to have brought a very bad tem- 
per to the work of disparaging all, whether Britons, Scots, 
or Saxons, who were not of that party. This animus is so 
manifest, that some have doubted if he was really a Briton. 
His prejudices in this respect have led him to make state- 
ments which are known to be false ; and there is no doubt 
that his colouring generally is greatly exaggerated. Of 
course these facts are to be borne in mind in any use that is 
made of Gildas.* 

Recent criticism has shown that the work which has Nennius. 
been so long attributed to Nennius, was probably written 

* Ancient Laics and Institutes of Wales, book iii. c. i. 
f Britannic Researches, by the Rev. Beale Poste, 165-180. 
Vol. I.— 7 



98 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B cu3. i L ^ a Briton named Marcus, -who became a bishop in Ireland. 
The work is now assigned to the year 822, and the great 
object of the writer is said to have been, to do honour to the 
memory of St. Germanus and St. Patrick. Kennius edited, 
or republished, the work about forty years later, and it has 
since borne his name. Many parts of this production con- 
sist of worthless traditions ; but there is a vein of truth in 
it that may be separated to the purposes of history.* The 
same may be said of the old Welsh bards Ancurin, and Ta- 
liesin, and of the Chronicle by Tysilio — of which more pre- 
sently. 
3candina- ^ ne P oe * :i y °f Scandinavia makes us acquainted with 

tedtoadu 7 tnc Saxon and the Dane along those stormy creeks and bays 
tion. from which they launched forth as sea-kings some ten or 

twelve centuries since. It is M~ell to know what those chil- 
dren of Odin were before the education of time and circum- 
stances had given their descendants their great work to do 
in this island. The Edda, and the Song of Zodbrok, have 
their uses in this way. One of the first lessons of Provi- 
dence to this seaman race was to give them a settled home, 
and to make them Christians ; and, that done, we find them 
abstaining, with singular simplicity and sincerity, from all 
mention of what they had been as pagans. In that respect, 
the past with them was in a memorable degree the past. 
It is only as Christians that they become historians, and 
then a considerable space had intervened since their land- 
ing as freebooters on the shores of Britain. The space, 
however, between those events, was not such as to allow 
tradition to become uncertain concerning the one or the 
other. The north had been to them a region of myth and 
fable. . In Anglo-Saxon Britain there was no growth of that 
description. The imagination became otherwise occupied. 
Christian superstitions came into the place of pagan fictions. 
But it is not difficult to distinguish between the supersti- 
tions, and the genuine history with which they are connected.f 

* See the edition of this writer published by the Irish Archaeological Society, 
and edited by the Rev. Dr. Todd and the Hon. Algernon Herbert. Dublin. 
1848. 

f Mallet's Northern Antiquities. 



SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTOET. 99 

When the venerable Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical His- B00K n. 

i i • it Chap. 1. 

tori/, more than two centuries had passed since the landing ; 

of Hengist and Horsa : something more than a century had Sa -f on 

° # 7 ° •/ writers — 

intervened since the founding of the last of the Anglo-Saxon Bede - 
kingdoms ; and about a century since the conversion of 
Ethelbert by the preaching of Augustine. Bede was not 
so far removed, therefore, from the great events in the early 
history of the Anglo-Saxons, as to be incapable of giving us 
a report of those entitled to credit. His history was, in 
fact, so full, so trustworthy, and so extraordinary a perform- 
ance, as produced in such circumstances, that the sources 
from which it was derived were in a singular degree super- 
seded by it ; and the very success of this narrative, appears 
to have been fatal to the preservation of much of the mate- 
rial on which it was based. We learn, however, from Bede 
himself, that this material existed, and whence it was ob- 
tained. He questioned all persons likely to furnish him 
with credible intelligence. He obtained assistance, he tells 
us, from abbots, bishops, and archbishops, and even from 
the archives of Rome. What could be done in this way he 
did, and no man could acquit himself with more conscien- 
tious integrity in his labour. His belief in miracles was 
the weakness of his age, and does not in the least detract 
from his credibility. His history was not his only work, 
but this description applies to all he has written.* It is to 
be regretted that his account of affairs in Wessex is so limit- 
ed ; but in those days this was a natural consequence of a 
residence so far north as Bishopswearmouth. This defi- 
ciency is in part supplied by the next great authority on this 
period — the Saxon Chronicle. 

Several manuscripts of the Saxon Chronicle are extant, Saxon 
more or less complete, and differing more or less from each 
other. Each of these manuscripts has had one transcriber 
until the date comes to about the middle of the ninth cen- 
tury, the transcripts being made probably from some earlier 
source, or sources, now lost. The later entries are by dif- 
ferent hands, and mostly, it would seem, by contemporaries. 

* Mbnumenta Historica Britannica, ubi supra. 



100 SAXONS AND DANES. 

Some suppose that we owe the transcriptions of the earlier 
portions to the patriotism of Alfred ; but on that point we 
have no certainty. All are agreed in their estimate of the 
general accuracy and great value of this record. It begins 
with the Roman invasion, and in several manuscripts de- 
scends to some time below the Conquest. In the early part 
it contains passages from Bede and other sources. In its 
later portions the information is often less full than might 
have been expected. Its language is Saxon, mostly in the 
dialect of "Wessex, sometimes in that of Mcrcia. In its later 
years the continuations are sometimes in Latin.* 

The volume published by our Record Commissioners in 
1S40, intitled, The Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, 
stands as our next authority. This volume is of great value. 
It contains the laws of the Anglo-Saxon kings from Ethel- 
bert to Canute, the laws of the Conqueror, those called the 
laws of Edward the Confessor, and those ascribed to Henry 
I. It also contains a large body of ecclesiastical law, afford- 
ing frequent glimpses into the religious and social life of 
the time. With this publication we must class the Domes- 
day Book) with the valuable ' Introduction ' by Sir Henry 
Ellis ; also the collection of the Anglo-Saxon charters edit- 
ed by Mr. Kemble.f 

The sources of information which remain are more frag- 
mentary, consisting mostly of poetry and the lives of saints. 
Alfred and his age have a literary prominence, partly from 
the genius and writings of the ting, and partly from the 
writings of Asser, a Welsh ecclesiastic, whom Alfred at- 
tached as a scholar to his person and household. 

Readers who observe the authors cited by our popular 
historians in connexion with Anglo-Saxon history, will be 
aware that many of those authorities do not belong to 
Anglo-Saxon times, but to times considerably after the Con- 
quest. It will be seen also that they are commonly and 
silently adduced, as if their testimony were of the first order 
and decisive. But docs the case really so stand '. Among 

■ Monumenta Historka Britannica, ubi supra. Tlie Church Histories of 
England, vol. ii. pt. i. Freface. 

\ Codec Diplomatics JEvi SaxonicL 



SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY. 101 

the writers of this class we may mention Florence of "Wor- book n - 

J Chap. 1. 

cester, Simeon of Durham, Henr y of Huntingdon, and Roger 

of Hoveden, Alured of Beverley, and Ingulf of Croyland. 

The work which bears the name of Florence is derived FIorence - 
mainly from Bede, Asser, the /Saxon Chronicle, and a His- 
tory of Ely. Florence died in a.d. 1118, and his work 
closes with that year. The Saxon language was familiar to 
him, and the manuscripts from which he copied are said to 
have been good. It is not, however, until this writer ap- 
proaches his own time that his material becomes important. 
Simeon of Durham's Chronicle extends from the year 818 simeon of 

^ Durham. 

to 1129. It is taken almost wholly and literally from Flor- 
ence. It contains some things, however, relating to the 
north, not to be found elsewhere ; and more of the same 
material will be found in the History of the Kings of Eng- 
land, and in the History of Durham, by the same author. 
Huntingdon's narrative extends from the landing of Julius 
Cassar to the first half of the twelfth century. On the his- Hunting- 
tory of the Anglo-Saxons Henry availed himself of the best 
known sources ; and of some, both Welsh and English, 
which seem to have perished. He is full in his account of 
battles, and his narrative evinces a more free and manly 
spirit than is common with writers of his order. Hoveden novedcn. 
lived to the beginning of the thirteenth century. His work 
is much cited by historians ; but it is a transcript, almost 
from beginning to end, either of Simeon of Durham, or of 
Henry of Huntingdon. Alured of Beverley is a writer of Alured. 
the same description. His work consists of little more than 
transcriptions from Bede, Simeon of Durham, Florence of 
Worcester, and Geoffrey of Monmouth. But the work in 
this series which suggests the greatest caution in the use of 
these authorities is that attributed to Ingulf. Until with- ingulf. 
in the last thirty years, this work has been freely cited as a 
sufficient authority on the wide range of historical represen- 
tation contained in it. By the most competent judges, and 
on evidence only too manifest, its historical value has been 
shown to be very small.* Its errors and anachronisms, 

* Dr. Hlckes exposed the fictions to be found in this work, a century and a 



102 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



while professing to be an autobiography, are such as to cast 
a strong suspicion over the portions of true history that are 
to be found in it. The continuation by Peter of Blois is 
entitled to more credit, but that is another work. 

The historical romance by Geoffrey of Monmouth is 
little more than a rendering into Latin of the pretended 
Chronicle by the British writer Tysilio. "We may believe 
Geoffrey when he tells us that he received the manuscript 
on which his work was founded, from Armorica ; but it 
seems no less clear that the work was that attributed to 
Tysilio, who was a Briton, and lived in the early part of 
the eleventh century.* Neither production is of much 
value in regard to history, though both are objects of inter- 
est as relating to the literature of the times in which they 
were produced. The Chronicle attributed to Matthew of 
"Westminster contains some information relating to early 
Saxon and British affairs not found in other writers, and 
which may have been derived from trustworthy sources no 
longer existing. But as the sources are not mentioned, such 
passages are of no great authority. "William of Malmes- 
bury belongs to a limited class of writers, who, in the elev- 
enth and twelfth centuries aimed at something above com- 
pilation, and took the classical historians as their model. 
The imitation, as will be supposed, was not always in good 
taste. But Malmesbury is a valuable guide. 

The above instances will suffice to show the measure of 
authority which belongs to Anglo-Norman writers in regard 
to Anglo-Saxon history. "We should add, also, that in the 
men who write upon our history after the Conquest, a bias 
is often perceptible, disposing them greatly to underrate the 
Saxon nationality. Modern writers have not always been 
sufficiently on their guard against this influence, nor always 
sufficiently mindful of the fact, that in relation to British 
and Anglo-Saxon history, these writers can never be more 
than second-hand authorities. The question in regard to 



half ago. Praefatio in Thesaur. Ling. Vett. p. xxix. ed. Oxon. 1*703. See also 
Quarterly Review, xxxiv. 248, et seq., by Sir Francis Palgrave. Lappenberg, vol. 
i. pp. li. lii. Monumcnia Historica Britannica. 
* Poste's Britannic Researches. 



SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY. 103 

most of them is, not what have they said concerning times B op^ J 1 

so long anterior to their own, but what authority have they 

had for what they say ? It is not enough that a modern 
historian professes to restrict himself to original authorities. 
Two things more are necessary — the intelligence that can 
estimate those authorities at their proper value, and the in- 
tegrity which shall ensure that an honest use is made of 
them. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE MIGRATION. 



ON the departure of the Romans, authority seems to have 
passed very much into the hands of the Roman settlers, 
and partly into the hands of the more able men among the 
Britons, or of such as claimed descent from the native 
princes. The usages found among the Britons of a later age, 
and which no doubt obtained among them even at this 
early period, were both monarchical and popular. Govern- 
ment was everywhere by kingship, and everywhere by 
popular assemblies. The obligation imposed on the tything 
and the hundred by the Anglo-Saxons, had been long before 
imposed by the Britons on kindred. The men responsible 
for each man's good conduct, were not men of the same 
neighbourhood, but men of the same blood.* How much of 
this usage was tolerated under the Romans is not known, 
but it became general when the Britons were left to them- 
selves. The British code of penalties was, in common witli 
the Anglo-Saxons, very much a code of fines and compen- 
sations, wherever compensation was possible. But organ- 
izations of this nature had been too much disturbed by the 
Romans to be soon restored and settled. An interval also 
was to pass in which feud was to do its usual mischief. 

The great difficulty of the Romans during the last two 
centuries of their rule in Britain, came from the frequent in- 
cursions of the Caledonians, who were in possession of the 
country north of the wall of Antoninus. These Caledonii 
of the Romans appear to have received a large accession of 

* Laws of Howell the Good, book iii. chap. i. 



THE MIGRATION. 105 

settlers in those days from Ireland ; and with this migration B00K IL 

came the names of Scots and Picts. After the opening of 

the fourth century the whole people north of the Tyne are 
often so designated. Those tribes or clans knew nothing of 
the civilization which the Romans had introduced among 
the people of the south ; or knew it only to despise it as 
effeminate, and as the badge of servitude. They did noth- 
ing in the way of ploughing or sowing. It was their pleas- 
ure to roam about with their flocks and herds, and what 
they did not secure as wandering herdsmen, they obtained 
by hunting, or by levying contributions on their weaker 
neighbours. Gildas describes them as differing in some de- 
gree from each other in manners, but as influenced by the 
same thirst for blood, and as being more disposed to shroud 
their ' villanous faces ' in bushy hair, than to cover their 
persons with decent clothing.* The name Pict comes from 
their own language, and could hardly have been used to de- 
note the stained or pictured appearance of their bodies. 

When these troublesome neighbours heard of the de- Repulsed t>j 
parture of the Romans, they soon began to make incursions 
southward. The resistance they met with was at first more 
formidable than they had expected. Many who had served 
in the Roman army, both natives and settlers, resumed their 
weapons. Profiting by such leadership, the Britons repel- 
led the invaders. But the enemy learned wisdom from disas- 
ter. They came in greater numbers, and with better organ- 
ization. 

The Britons began to be much discouraged. They sent Assistance 
delegates to seek assistance from the Romans. The Empe- the e™ y 
ror Honorius despatched a legion from Gaul to their help ; 
the Romans chased the Scots back to their forests and fast- 
nesses; but this force did not remain in the island. f In 
the year 423 the Britons were again petitioners for help, 
and in 426 another legion appeared among them, led by Gal- 
lio Ravennas, a general who not only inflicted signal chas- 
tisement on the Scots, but spared no pains to put the Brit- 
ons in the way of defending themselves for the future. By 

* Hist. § 19. Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. i. c. 2. 

f Gildas, Hist. § 16. Bede, Eccles. Hist, lib i. c. 12. Nennius, § 30. 



106 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



^h^?. %' n * s advice they relinquished the wall of Antoninus, and with 
it the whole of the country between Newcastle and Edin- 
burgh. He superintended the repairs of the wall of Seve- 
rus, and urged the Britons to guard it well, as their most 
natural boundary northward. He warned them, moreover, 
that the Scots were not their only enemies. He assured 
them that they had fully as much to fear from the Frank 
and the Saxon ; and before leaving them, he gave them his 
assistance in raising fortresses, and many places of observa- 
tion, along the southern coast. This was in 427.* 

Eight years later a great battle was fought between the 
Scots and the Britons of the north. It is said to have been 
the most formidable encounter that had ever taken place 
between the two races. Its issue was disastrous to the Brit- 
ons. In 446 they seem to have made an effort to throw off 
the yoke which had been thus imposed on them, but with- 
out effect. It was by this section of the Britons, and in these 
circumstances, that the letter preserved in Gildas, entitled 
' The groans of the Britons,' appears to have been written. 
It is addressed to Etius, the Roman governor in Gaul. It 
has been accepted by modern historians as genuine, and no 
document lias done so much towards producing an unfavour- 
able impression in regard to the character of the Britons gen- 
erally at this juncture. But in our estimate of this people 
it becomes us to look to their history as a whole, and to 
look well to the quarter where the blame of much that may 
seem blameworthy should be laid. It had been so long the 
policy of the Romans to deprive the Britons of all native 
leadership, that we scarcely need wonder if, when liberty 
was given them to avail themselves of such aid, it had ceas- 
ed to exist. 

Great was the change which had come over the country- 
men of Caractacus during the last four hundred years — the 
men who, in their time, had known how to chase before 
them, not only whole cohorts, but even legions of their op- 
pressors. Great, too, was the change which had come over 
the affairs of South Britain within a quarter of a century 



* Bede, Hist. lib. i. c. 12. Gildas, Hist. §§ 11, 18. 



THE MIGRATION. 107 

.after the iinal departure of the Romans. Gildas wrote some- book ii. 
thing more than a century later; and, though we take his — '-' 
descriptions with great deduction, it is hardly to be doubt- 
ed that the safety of life and property ceased for a time 
through a large portion of the island. Lands which had 
been wont to yield abundant harvests lay uncultivated. Vil- 
lages and towns were to a large extent deserted and in ruins. 
Such of the Britons as opposed themselves to the Scots rare- 
ly did so in the open field, but waylaid them in the forests 
and passes. The monuments of Roman art were everywhere 
mutilated, or allowed to go to decay. Famine and disease 
came in the train of these disorders. It is difficult, how- 
ever, to say to how much of the country this description 
would apply, or how long it continued. We know that in 
the fifth century, when a formidable invasion by the Scots 
was said to be in preparation, the Britons of the south and 
west had their kings. Vortigern was then king over the 
people bordering on the Thames, and the Britons who dis- 
puted the entrance of Scot and Saxon for the next hundred 
years, did so under kings as leaders, and did so with no lit- 
tle courage and perseverance. To this interval belong all 
the chivalrous narratives concerning Aurelius, Uther Pen- 
dragon, and King Arthur. 

The King Yortigern mentioned, is the chief who has be- The 
come so memorable in our history from his invitation to axons ' 
the Saxons to become his auxiliaries in resisting the Scots. 
The first mention of the Saxons in history is by Ptolemy the 
geographer. Ptolemy makes them to be of Scythian de- 
scent. They were manifestly a branch of the great Teu- 
tonic family, and included tribes under various names be- 
sides those properly known as Saxons. About the middle 
of the second century the Saxons were in possession of that 
part of the shore of the modern duchy of Holstein which 
lies between the mouths of the Eyder and the Elbe. The 
Baltic side of the duchy, which still bears the name of An- 
glen, was the country of the Angles ; and the home of the 
Jutes — the Jutland-men — stretched indefinitely northward. 
Two centuries later these tribes, under the general name of 
Saxons, had spread their conquests so far south as to be 



108 SAXONS AND DANES. 

3ook ii. found over the whole space between the Eyder and the 

Chap. 2. 

Rhine. In the middle of the fifth century, the time now 

under review, their territory embraced the whole country 
along the coast of the German Ocean, including both West 
and East Friesland, Holland, and Zealand, besides Westpha- 
lia and Saxony, and countries further north.* 

The part of those regions in which the Saxons are first 
known, was fringed with the most intricate shores, embra- 
cing many inlets and islands. Everywhere they were ex- 
posed to the influences of northern cold and tempest. Every- 
thing there seemed to combine for the purpose of training a 
hardy race to maritime adventure. The Saxons became 
all that a map would suggest as probable in the history of 
rude tribes so placed. Steady industry they despised. 
Their great trust was in their swords. Plunder by sea or 
by land was their chief vocation. Band after band, as they 
subdued districts, settled in them, compelling the vanquish- 
ed to do their husbandry, while they went forth themselves 
from season to season in search of new adventure and new 
spoil. Every man had his chief, to whom he promised fidel- 
ity ; and when an enterprise embraced several chiefs, one 
was invested with supreme command for the occasion. 
They used the bow, the spear, the sword, the battle-axe, and 
a club with spikes projecting from a knob at the end, and 
sometimes called the ' hammer.' The last three of these wea- 
pons were of great length and weight. But the men of the 
Saxon race were generally above the middle stature, power- 
fully built, and could make these implements fall with ter- 
rible effect upon an enemy. They wore helmets, the metal 
of which descended on either side of the head to the ears, 
and sometimes sent a line of protection down the centre of 
the forehead. All the more exposed parts of their persons 
were guarded in like manner. 
xons of Of course this description applies to the Saxons of the 

otuiy. fifth century ; in their earlier adventures there was little of 
this martial presence about them. In those early days their 

* Ptol. Geoff, ii. c. 2. Eutrop. ix. Steph. Byzant. voc. Saxone.i. Orosius, 
lib. i. § i. Ad Bremen" ccx. Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. i. c. 15 ; lib. v. c. ii. 
Cluver. Ant. Germ. iii. 96 et seq. Chron. Sax. an. 449. 



THE MIGRATION. 109 

boats or vessels were mostly of lath and oisier work, overlaid book il 

with skins. But in the time of Yortigern the chiule of the 

Saxon pirate vied with the Roman galley in strength and 
spaciousness. So armed, and with such vessels, the Saxon 
sea-kings, as they were called, became the terror of their 
time, especially along the coasts of Gaul and Britain. Be- 
fore Saxon Britain was heard of, Britain, Belgium, and 
Gaul had their Saxon shore — coast lands, so called in conse- 
quence of their exposure to attacks from this formidable 
enemy. In the fifth century, their numbers, their skill, their 
audacity, and their cruelty, had combined to make them the 
most dreaded foe of civilization north of the Rhine. Con- 
stantine the Great, Theodosius, and Stilicho, had distin- 
guished themselves by their attempts to check the incur- 
sions of these assailants. But as the strength of the empire 
declined, the boldness of these enemies increased. In fact, 
they made rapid progress in the art of war by means of the 
encounters with civilized and disciplined foes to which they 
were from time to time committed. The event to be de- 
sired was, that their successes should open to them induce- 
ments to relinquish a mode of life so pregnant with evil to 
themselves and to humanity. The qualities conspicuous in 
them were such as to ensure their eminent success in the 
race of civilization should circumstances arise to dispose 
them to such pursuits. 

Our Saxon authorities relate, that in the year 447 or 449, Hengist 
Yortigern, a British king near the Thames, invited two Sax — Saxon. 
on chiefs, named Hengist and Horsa, to assist him in repel- 
ling an invasion by the Picts and Scots ; that these chiefs, 
who were brothers, landed in Thanet, a portion of Kent, sep- 
arated from the mainland of that district by a river ; that 
the Saxons soon chased the Scots from the lands they had 
devastated ; that with the consent of Yortigern, the Saxon 
force in Thanet was increased considerably ; that this in- 
crease caused distrust among the Britons ; that the increase 
of pay thus made necessary led to disputes ; that these dis- 
putes issued in open war ; that after a long series of con- 
flicts, victory declared in favour of the Saxons ; that Hen- 
gist became king of Kent, and in the year 488 bequeathed 



110 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



his authority to his son iEsca, having exercised it fifteen 
years. 

Our British authorities say that Hengist and Horsa were 
exiles in search of a home ; that the increase of the force in 
Thanet was treacherously managed ; that the design of that 
movement was to conquer the country ; that Hengist had a 
beautiful daughter named Rowena, who, when the Saxon 
and British chiefs were over their cups, was employed to 
present a goblet to Vortigern ; that Vortigern fell into the 
snare thus laid for him, by becoming enamoured of Row- 
ena, so as to be prepared to barter the kingdom of Kent as 
the price of possessing her person ; that in the wars which 
ensued, Vortigern was disowned by his subjects, and his 
son Vortimer raised to sovereignty in his stead ; that for 
several years Hengist was compelled to seek refuge in his 
ships, and to subsist by his piracies ; that at a feast after- 
wards given by the Saxon leaders, some three hundred Brit- 
ish chiefs were treacherously murdered ; that the only one 
of the British chiefs who was spared was Vortigern ; and 
that, notwithstanding the alleged unpopularity of this prince, 
to secure the liberation of Vortigern, the people of Kent, 
Sussex, Middlesex, and Essex consented to receive Hengist 
as their king." 

The discrepancies between these two accounts are such 
as we might expect from sources so distinct and so hostile. 
But there is a substance of statement common to them both, 
sufficient to show that Hengist and Horsa are historical per- 
sons, and that the commonly understood facts of their lives 
may be received as history. To attempt to reduce them to 
mythic personages, and to conclude that we really know 
nothing of the matter, would be to follow a fashion in criti- 
cism, and to underrate the lights of the past. It is very 
probable that Hengist and Horsa were chiefs in search of 
a home, and that their policy from the first was to find a 
home in this country, either by stipulation or the sword. 
But the story concerning the slaughter of the British chiefs 
comes from Nennius. Had it been a fact, Gildas could not 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. I. c. 15. Chron. Sax. ad aim. 449 et seq. Gil- 
das, Hist. §§ 23-26. Nennius, §§ 31, 36-38, 44-45. 



THE MIGRATION. Ill 

have been ignorant of it, and would not have failed to give ^ok ii. 

it prominence. An account of the conquests of the Saxons 

in Thurino-ia contains a similar fiction. 

Horsa fell in an early encounter with the Britons. Hen- Else of tho 

J Saxon Oc- 

gist, as the Saxon authorities relate, did not become sover- tai- chy. 
eign of Kent before the year 473 — more than twenty years 
after his first compact with Vortigern. The British accounts 
indicate that the resistance made was thus obstinate, and in 
part successful ; and the space intervening between the rise 
of this first state of the Saxon Octarchy, and the rise of the 
last, is a century and a half. Sussex, the kingdom of the 
South Saxons, was the second state established. It was 
founded by Ella in 496. This was the smallest state of the 
Octarchy. The state of the West Saxons, which dates from 
the year 519, was of much greater extent, embracing Sur- 
rey, Berks, Dorset, Somerset, and Devon, with parts of 
Hampshire and Cornwall. The founder of this sovereignty 
was Cerdic. East Anglia included Norfolk, Suffolk, Cam- 
bridge, the Isle of Ely, and part of Bedfordshire, and was es- 
tablished by Uffa in the year 540. Erkenwen laid the foun- 
dation of the state of the East Saxons, which compreh ended 
Essex, Middlesex, and a southern district of Hertfordshire. 
This kingdom commences with the year 542. The kingdom 
of Bernicia was established by Ida in 548, under whom the 
Angles possessed themselves of Northumberland, and of 
the northern parts of Westmoreland and Cumberland, with 
the part of Scotland between Newcastle and Edinburgh. 
The kingdom of Deira embraced Lancashire and Yorkshire, 
with the southern divisions of Westmoreland and Cumber- 
land. While this kingdom continued separate the Saxon 
states in Britain were an Octarchy ; its union with North- 
umbria, which was the case for the most part, reduced them 
to a Heptarchy. We have seen that the kingdom of the 
South Saxons was founded by a chief named Ella ; and it 
was a chief of that name who founded the kingdom of Dei- 
ra, about sixty years later. Mercia, the last of the Saxon 
kingdoms, does not make its appearance before the year 
586 ; but it was, in regard to extent of territory, the most 
considerable state in the Octarchy, comprehending all the 



112 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



Course of 
the Saxon 
conquests. 



British re 
sistance. 



book * L midland counties, and forming for centuries the great bar- 
rier kingdom between the Saxons and the Welsh.* 

It will be seen from this sketch that the conquest of the 
Saxons followed the same track that had been taken by the 
Romans. From the coast of Kent the invaders gradually 
spread themselves southward, northward, and westward — 
the country of Caractacus, which was the last to submit to 
the Romans, being the last to submit to the Saxons. Where 
the Romans had been most ascendant, the Saxons gained 
their earliest and their easiest victories. In this manner did 
the portion of our island known by the name of England 
pass into the hands of the people from whom it derived that 
name. 

During a hundred and fifty years the Britons continued 
to measure weapons with the Saxons in defence of this soil ; 
a fact sufficient to warrant distrust of the pictures given of 
this people by Gildas. The chivalrous performances assign- 
ed to this period of British history by British tradition and 
romance may be entitled to little credit. But fictions so 
impassioned and so permanent imply facts — the mythic Ar- 
thur, supposes a real one. The conception of an age of he- 
roes can have no place with a people who are not them- 
selves heroic. It is unfortunate indeed, for the fame of 
those supposed heroes, that writers so near their time as 
Bede and Gildas should seem to have heard so little about 
them. But, on the other hand, the writings of the ancient 
bards, Aneurin and Taliesin, and those of Nennius, of Tysi- 
lio, and of Geoffrey of Monmouth, point to the channel 
through which the faith of a people in regard to that heroic 
age has descended. We have no great confidence in what 
these writers record as facts, but there is an historical signi- 
ficance in the spirit which pervades their productions. The 
renowned Arthur is not an Armorican, but strictly a British 
hero. The conception of him has come to us from a people 
whose descendants are still living about us. 

We have now seen that the forty years between the de- 
parture of the Romans and the coming in of the Saxons 
were, for the most part, years of retrogression in British 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist, passim. Chron. Sax. ad ann. 449-588. 



Summary. 



Chap. 2. 



THE MIGRATION. 113 

history. Even then, the season of inquietude and disaster book ii. 
had not come to an end. The ravages of the Saxons were 
to follow those of the Picts and Scots ; and though the Sax- 
on was a less barbarous antagonist than the Scot, his wars 
seemed for a time to have completed what his precursor had 
done only in part. The sea-king from the Elbe has come 
into the place of the prefect of the Tiber, and the general 
change is such as this change of names will suggest. Yery 
memorable in English history is this Second Revolution by 
the Sword. 

Vol. I.— 8 



CHAPTEE III. 



ELSE OF TILE ENGLISH MONABCHY EGBERT. 



THE wars of rude communities possess so much in com- 
mon, as to be entitled to small consideration from the 
historian. But there arc instances in which such narratives 
may have their place among the valuable materials of his- 
tory. Such events may illustrate the character of a people, 
and may have influenced their local settlements. They may 
have contributed in this way to the development of the 
modification of the languages, the institutions, and the 
usages of races. In all these respects the war-history of 
Anglo-Saxon Britain was influential, and merits a degree 
of attention on this account that would not otherwise be 
due to it. 

The wars of the Saxons during the first three centuries 
after their settlement in Britain, were wars carried on in 
part with the natives, and in part with each other. Every 
Btate was won by the sword, and kept only by the sword. 
The dangers of each state in its earlier history, came from the 
partially vanquished Britons ; in its later history, from the 
rivalries which grew up between the new sovereignties 
when established. It must suffice to touch on the outline 
of this subject, and especially on such points as indicate a 
tendency to substitute unity for partition — to give existence 
to a central and consolidated sovereignty. 

During more than twenty years Ilengist and his fol- 
lowers were engaged in frequent and deadly hostilities with 
the Britons. Xot until the close of that interval can the 
kingdom of Kent be said to have been established. Ayles 
ford, Crayford, and "Wippendsfleet are places in that coun 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY EGBERT. 115 

ty which became memorable in the history of this struggle.* B °o K "• 

Ella, and his three sons, who established the neighbour 

kingdom of the South Saxons, met with a resistance no less 
resolute and protracted. The great forest of Andreds-lea 
was long an asylum to the Britons in their reverses. Cerdic, 
the founder of the kingdom of the "West Saxons, which em- 
braced a much larger territory than either of the states 
above mentioned, was engaged in hot wars with the Britons 
over the west of England, from 495 to 519. Thus slow 
and costly was the progress of the Saxon chiefs generally, 
in giving existence to the several states of the Hep- 
tarchy, f 

But it does not appear that any one of the branches of intention of 
the great German family who thus sought a new home in in their de- 

t» • • i • i • i i •' • n • • -i • scents upon 

Jt>ntam, did so with the intention of continuing the piratical Britain. 
and marauding life to which they had been accustomed in 
their own country. With the possession of a richer soil, 
and under the influence of a more genial climate, they 
were prepared to turn their thoughts towards the arts of 
peace, and towards the means necessary to give security to 
their acquisitions and their power. 

The language of Bede and of the Saxon Chronicle is ex- office of 

... in i i i r> n Bretwalda. 

plicit as to the tact that during the first century of the 
Heptarchy, one of its princes generally possessed a prece- 
dence of the rest, under the title of the Bretwalda, or the 
' wielder.' Some seven, indeed nine, princes are named, as 
having sustained this dignity. But there were intervals in 
which the authority of the prince claiming that precedence 
was not more than partially acknowledged. Indeed, during 
more than a century and a half it ceased to exist ; and the 
real power of the Bretwalda at any time was so limited and 
undefined, that it is impossible now to say in what it con- 
sisted. In its existence, however, we see evidence that the 
existence of some such authority was felt to be highly ex- 
pedient, if not necessary ; and it gives us the embryo of the 
power which was at length to centre in a single person as 
monarch of all England.^ 

* Chron. Sax. a.p. 440-488. Chron. Ethelwerd, c. i. Bede, Hist. c. 15. 

f Chron. Sax. a.d. 477-519. Ethelwerd, c. i. 

\ Bede, Hist. ii. 5. Chron. Sax. a.d. 827. Ethelwerd, iii. c. 2. 



116 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B c°n°? 3 L Disputes concerning this precedence gave rise to the 
first war of one Anglo-Saxon state upon another. Ella of 
Sussex, from some unknown cause, was the first Britwalda. 
On his decease, Ethelbert of Kent, then only sixteen years 
of age, laid claim to that rank. But his competitor was 
Ceawlin, the powerful King of Wessex, who humbled him 
in battle. Ceawlin gained repeated victories over the Brit- 
ons, united the territory of the South Saxons to that of the 
West Saxons, and survived as Bretwalda to the year 593. 
On the death of Ceawlin, the disputed title was conferred 
on Ethelbert, who retained it to the year 616. But it did 
not pass into the hands of his son. Jledwald, King of the 
East Angles, was its next possessor. No power had ever 
been so formidable to the Picts and Scots as Northumbria 
became about this time ; and the terror with which the 
severities of the settlers in those northern provinces had 
filled their freebooting neighbours lasted for several genera- 
tions. Edwin of Northumbria became Bretwalda in 627 ; 
and was the most potent among the princes who had hitherto 
borne that title. Not only the Saxon, but the British kings, 
are said to have acknowledged his sovereignty, so far as 
to pay him tribute ; and his own dominions, besides includ- 
ing the united kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, extended 
so far as to include the Isle of Anglesea and the Isle of 
Man. 

But Mercia became jealous of Northumbria. in t>33, 
Penda of Mercia, and Ceadwalla of North Wales, combined 
their forces against that kingdom. In a battle at Hatfield, 
in Yorkshire, Edwin, and one of his sons, were slain ; an- 
other son was murdered when the battle had ceased. Such 
members of the family of Edwin as survived sought refuge 
with their relative then ruling in Kent. The victors over- 
ran the prostrate country, pillaging without limit, and de- 
stroying without mercy, the Christian Welsh, exceeding, it 
is said, in their atrocities, the pagan Mercians. But Oswald, 
a nephew of Edwin, at length avenged the fate of his kin- 
dred ; and, under his powerful sway, the two northern king- 
doms were once more united. Oswald was the sixth Bret- 
,walda ; but his reign was short. In the eighth year of his 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY EGBERT. 117 

sovereignty he, too, was defeated by the Mercians under B £®* \ L 

Penda. Oswald was succeeded, both as king of Northum- 

bria, and as Bretwalda, by his brother, Oswy, who strength- 
ened his claim to the throne by marrying his cousin, the 
daughter of Edwin. Through the next twenty-eight years 
— years of storm and change — the sceptre of Northumbria 
was wielded by a strong hand. But Oswy was the last 
Bretwalda. He died in 670.* 

It thus appears that the office of Bretwalda was recos:- £ u ? a . ce of 

A L ~ Britain not 

nized, more or less, among the Ancdo-Saxons during nearly favourable 

o o o J to a con- 

tWO centuries — from the death of Hensrist, in 488, to the l\? u ™ ce of 

o ' ' the Hep- 

death of Oswy, in 670. The office had come into existence tarchy - 

from a sense of common danger and of common interest ; 
and it owed its continuance to the feeling in which it had 
originated. This danger was apprehended as likely to come 
from the Britons in the west, from the Scots in the north, 
and from the unsettled hordes on the other side the German 
Ocean. But the idea of combination against these foes was 
more an idea than a reality. Experience had shown this ; 
and the function of Bretwalda appears to have ceased as it 
became manifest that the uses of it were imaginary. But 
so long as a Bretwalda was acknowledged, there was the 
probability that a powerful chief, under that title, would 
some day become king of Anglo-Saxon Britain. From the 
manner in which the Saxons became possessed of the coun- 
try, it was natural that it should be parcelled out into a 
number of separate and comparatively small sovereignties. 
Rut there was nothing in the surface of the country to 
favour the perpetuity of the state of things so originated. 
Greece, by the intersections of its seas and mountains, ap- 
peared to be mapped out by the hand of Providence to be- 
come the home of a number of small and independent 
states. Not so that part of.Britain which has since become 
known as Engand. The fastnesses of Wales, and the York- 
shire and Grampian Hills, might long present impediments 
in the way of a great national unity. But over the remain- 
ing portion of the island the lines of separation between 

* Chron. Sax. a.d. 488-670. Ethelwerd, lib. i. n. Bede, Hist. ii. 5. 



118 SAXONS AND DANES. 

E chap s L territory and territory were so faint, that the necessary 
alternative was, between a state of almost perpetual fend, 
and the concentration of the several states into one by some 
leader powerful enough to realize such a change. But the 
office of Bretwalda is perpetuated through nearly two cen- 
turies, and no one of the princes sustaining it becomes thus 
potent. And now a hundred and thirty years intervene 
between the death of the last Bretwalda and the accession 
of Egbert, sometimes described as the first king of England ; 
and two centuries and a half are to pass before the accession 
of Athelstan, the first Anglo-Saxon king really entitled, to 
that description. 

The history of the Anglo-Saxons during something more 
than the first half of the next two hundred and fifty years, is 
mainly the history of the three principal states — Nortlmm- 
bria, Mereia, and "Wessex. These states, as seen on the 
map, form a crescent, one point of the curve taking its start 
from the part of Scotland bounded by Glasgow and Edin- 
burgh, and the other point terminating in Cornwall. In the 
hollow of this crescent lies the home of the Welsh ; beyond 
the outer line of it, and stretching toward the English Chan- 
nel and the German Ocean, lay the kingdom of the East 
Saxons, Sussex, Kent, and East Anglia. An intelligent 
conception of this period in English history is not possible 
without keeping these facts in mind. 

Northum- During the hundred and thirty years between the death 

of Oswy, the last Bretwalda, and the accession of Egbert to 
the throne of Wessex, the sceptre of Xorthumbria passed 
into new hands upon the average every seven or ten years. 
Of these princes, the one-half perished in the constantly 
recurring wars of the period ; and the other half, with only 
one or two exceptions, were despatched or dethroned by 
their own subjects. These facts suggest much in regard to 
the disorder and crime prevalent among that people. But 
the reality in this case was such as hardly to be reached by 
the imagination. 

Egfrid, who succeeded Oswy his father, compelled both 
the Scots and the Mercians to respect his territory. But 
his wars were incessant — now with the Mercians, now with 



KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — EGBERT. 119 

the Irish, and now with the Scots. In an expedition against book ii 

the latter he was beset in the passes of the country, and 

experienced a signal defeat. His own body was among the 
slain. Few of his followers escaped. An army sent against 
the Scots by Aldfrid, his successor, shared the same fate. 
The reign of Aldfrid, ' the learned,' was comparatively 
peaceful. But on his decease, the history of ISTorthumbria 
becomes such a calendar of enormities that we feel no dis- 
position to dwell upon it. Kindred struggled against 
kindred for the possession of the supreme power : the prize 
seized at the cost of perfidy and blood to-day, was snatched 
away by hands as little scrupulous to-morrow ; and men 
who had hoped to brave the storm in which so many had 
perished, were glad to escape from the fury everywhere 
abroad, by seeking admission to a convent, as affording 
them their only chance of security and repose.' Charle- 
magne denounced these Northumbrians as ' a perverse and 
perfidious nation, worse than pagans.' * 

Mercia, we have seen, was the middle kingdom, between power of 
Korthumbria on the one hand, and Wessex on the other. 
With a powerful rival on either side, and with such bad 
neighbours as the Welsh along its whole western border, it 
seemed necessary to its independence that it should be the 
strongest kingdom of the three. But the comparative power 
of these states depended on power in their kings ; and each 
oscillated accordingly, as their monarchs happened to be 
men of capacity, or devoid of it. 

Oswy of Northumbria acquired a partial ascendency 
over Mercia. But before his decease in 670, the Mercians 
asserted their independence and something more. In 661 
Wulphere, the son of Penda, who then ruled in Mercia, 
overran Wessex, and attached portions of its territory to his 
own. But Wulphere died in 675, and before his death 
Egfurth of Nbrthumbria had again turned the scale in favour 
of the northern kingdom. Ethelred, who reigned over 
Mercia the next thirty years, sustained its independence 
and reputation. Little need be said of the two immediate 

* Bede, Hist. iii. 14-27 ; iv. 26 ; r. 23. Chron. Sax. a.d. 617-800. Malms. 
de Reg. 



120 SAXONS AND DANES 

B chap "' successors °f Etlielred — Csenred and Ceolred. The first 

retired to a monastery after a reign of five years. The 

second shortened his days by licentiousness. Their conjoint 
reigns numbered twelve years, and these appear to have 
been years of quiet to their subjects. 

Ethelbald, the next king of Mercia, reigned from 716 to 
757. He was a man of dissolute habits through the greater 
portion of his life. But he was also a man of capacity, both in 
council and in the field. For a time, not only the lesser 
states of the Heptarchy, but even "Wessex acknowdged his 
authority. 

But in 752 the West Saxons cast off the yoke which 
Ethelbald had imposed on them. In a memorable battle at 
Burford in Oxfordshire, the Mercians were not only defeated, 
but the panic which seized the army was attributed to a 
want of courage in their king. A few years later Ethelbald 
was succeeded by the celebrated Offa. 

Riso of offa. The first fourteen years in the reign of Offa were spent 
in quelling disaffection among his own subjects. Subse- 
quently he waged successful wars against Kent, and Wes- 
sex, and the Britons. To guard his territory against the 
incursions of the latter enemy, he constructed a trench and 
embankment, known in after times as ' Offa's dyke.' This 
work parted off the border territory of the Welsh from 
that of the Mercians, over the whole line of country from 
the neighbourhood of Chester to the lower banks of the 
Severn. 

offa and Through the influence of the Anglo-Saxon scholar 

Charle- 

magne. Alcuin, a correspondence took place between Offa and 
Charlemagne. The king of the Franks performed the office 
of mediator between Offa and certain Mercian thanes who 
had become exiles in France as the consequence of having 
committed themselves against the authority of Offa in the 
early period of his reign. "We learn also that Charlemagne 
felt aggrieved by some fiscal irregularities attributed to cer- 
tain Mercian manufacturers who imported wollen goods into 
France. On these matters the result of the communications 
between the two kings was satisfactory. But not so on 
matters of another kind. Charles requested the hand of a 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — EGBERT. 121 

daughter of Offa for one of his illegitimate sons. Offa, in book ii. 

return, requested the hand of a French princess for his eldest 

son Egfurth. But this presumption, as it was deemed, 
offended the pride of the Frank, and the correspondence 
between the two kings came to an end. 

The hand of the princess which Charlemagne had soli- * r " r( 'f °* 

i- ~ ^ Ethelbert. 

cited for his son was afterwards sought by Ethelbert, king 
of East Anglia. Ethelbert was young and accomplished, and 
possessed of many estimable qualities. Approaching the 
borders of Mercia, the young king despatched a messenger 
with presents, and with a letter, stating the object of his 
errand. In reply, assurance was given of a cordial wel- 
come ; and on his arrival, himself and his retinue were re- 
ceived with every apparent demonstration of respect and 
good feeling. As the advance of the evening brought the 
feasting and merry-making to a close, Ethelbert withdrew 
to his chamber. Presently a messenger sought access to 
him, and stated that the king wished to confer with him 
on some matters affecting the purpose of his visit. Ethel- 
bert at once followed the footsteps of his guide. But the 
way led through a dark narrow passage, and there, from 
invisible hands, the confiding youth received a number of 
wounds which at once deprived him of life. Offa affected 
surprise, indignation, the deepest grief ; he would see no 
one, and so on. But history points to his wife as having 
suggested this atrocious deed, and to himself as having con- 
sented to it. It is enough to say that Offa seized on the 
domains of his murdered guest. But in two short years the 
blood-guilty monarch was called to his account. This crime 
has fixed infamy on the name of Offa and his queen. Un- 
happily, such deeds were not rare in the history of ruling 
men and ruling women through this period of our history. 
Egfurth, the son of Offa, reigned but a few months ; and, 
after a few years of vicissitude and misfortune, that once 
powerful family became extinct. 

Cenulf, of the family of Penda, was the next king of 
Mercia. His reign is chiefly remarkable for his invasion of 
Kent, and from the part taken by him in certain ecclesiasti- 
cal disputes which will claim our attention in another place. 



122 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B ci?S. a' Kenelm, his son, a boy of seven years of age, was murdered 
a few months after his accession. Ceolwulf, who succeeded 
him, was dethroned in the second year of his sovereignty. 
Beornwulf, the next in succession, had to submit to the ris- 
ing power of Egbert of Wessex.* 

Wefsex! ° f ^ e are now c o m e upon a track which promises to bring 
us within sight of the object of our search — a concentration 
of the sovereignty in Anglo-Saxon Britain. We have seen 
that in 488 Ceawlin, king of "Wessex, became Bretwalda, 
on the decease of the first great Saxon adventurer, Hengist 
of Kent. Ceawlin was succeeded by his nephews Ceolric 
and Ceolwulf. ' The reign of Ceolwulf was long, and emi- 
nently successful. The Scots and Picts, the Britons and the 
Saxons, all felt the power of his hand. The South Saxons 
struggled in vain to become independent of his sway. The 
Britons he compelled to leave the plains of Gloucestershire, 
and to seek an asylum on the opposite banks of the Severn. 
On the death of Ceolwulf, in Gil, the successive reigns of 
the two nephews were followed by the conjoint reigns of 
two brothers, Cyncgils and Cuichelm, sons of Ceolwulf. 
Through twenty-four years the two brothers reigned in har- 
mony and successfully. They chastised an aggressive spirit 
manifested by the East Saxons ; and they were victors in 
their encounters with the Britons, especially in a great bat- 
tle at Brampton in Somersetshire. Even the strength of 
Penda of Mercia, if not inferior to their own, was not suffi- 
cient to subdue them. Cuichelm died in 635, Cyncgils in 
642. 

Coinwald, the son of Ceolwulf, was the next King of 
Wessex. He reigned thirty years. He waged successful 
war against the Britons. But in his time the "West Saxons 
bowed to the supremacy of Mercia, first under Penda, and 
afterwards under Wulphere. On the death of Ceolwulf, his 
widow, Sexburga, and several members of his family, set 
up their claim to be his successor, and for some thirteen 
years the country was filled with disorder and violence. In 

coftdwaiia. 685 Ceadwalla, a descendant of Ceawlin, became king. 

* Citron. Sac. a.d. 661 et scq. Ethelwerd, lib i. — iv. passim. Florence Wig- 
orn. a.d. 661-819. Bede. Lappenberg, Hist. Eng. i. 221-238. 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY EGBERT. 123 

Ceadwalla was not more than twenty-six years of age. But B r °°K \i 
he had made no secret of his pretensions to the throne, had a ^^ 
shown himself brave and able, and Centwin, the last king, 
had named him as his successor. His arms were successful 
against the South Saxons, and against the Jutes of Kent , 
and of the Isle of Wight. But his murder of the two sons 
of Arvald, a chief who had defended the latter place against 
him, betrayed his want of magnanimity, and proclaimed 
him as unscrupulous and cruel. He had formed a friend- 
ship in exile with another exile, Wilfrid, sometime Bishoj) 
of York. Under the influence of that ecclesiastic he visit- 
ed Rome, to receive baptism from the hands of the Pope ; 
but, before putting off the baptismal vestments, he was 
seized with the sickness of which he died seven days after- 
wards. 

If the reign of Ceadwalla was short, that of Ina, his sue- ina. 
cessor, was long — it was also memorable. It extended to 
thirty-seven years — from 688 to 726. Ina added the wis- 
dom of the legislator to his genius and courage as a military 
chief. He, too, ended his days as a religious pilgrim in 
Rome. His subjects, who appear to have grown impatient 
of his sway, were now left to reap as they had sown. They 
had embittered the latter days of a good king, and many 
long years of disorder and suffering awaited them. The 
succession to the throne was disputed. Their enemies, es- 
pecially the Britons, availed themselves of the season of 
weakness to make injurious inroads upon their territory. 
The successive reigns of Ethelheard, Cuthred, Sigebyrcht, 
Cynewulf, and Brittric give us alternations of success and 
defeat in wars against the Mercians and the Britons, with 
the too common admixture of deeds of treachery and mur- 
der. Of Brittric' we only know that he was chosen by the 
Wessex thanes as successor to Cynewulf; that at first he 
had a competitor in Egbert, who, after fifteen years of exile, 
was to be his successor ; and that he met his death by 
drinking from a poisoned cup wdiich his queen had prepared 
for a young nobleman, of whose place in the affections of 
the king she had become jealous. This queen was Eadbur- 
ga, a daughter of Offa. 



124 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 3. 



Accession 
of Egbert. 



Extent of 
bis autho- 
rity. 



England 
not design- 
ed for an 
Heptarchy. 



On the death of Brittric, Egbert was the only surviving 
descendant of Cerdic, the founder of Wessex. His claim to 
the throne was undisputed. His years of exile had been to 
him years of education. Under Charlemagne he became 
proficient in matters of war and government. The early 
years of his reign were wisely employed in improving the 
condition of his people, and in consolidating his power. 
Subsequently he extended his conquests into Wales, and 
the western counties of England. The Britons in those ter- 
ritories had never been so far subdued.* But it was not 
until more than twenty years after his accession that Egbert 
ventured to attack the Mercians. The East Anglians urged 
him strongly to this enterprise. They still remembered the 
murder of their young king Ethelbert, and longed to see a 
fitting vengeance descend on the power which they viewed 
as stained with his blood. The victory of Egbert over 
Beornwulf of Mercia, in 823, enabled him to assert his sov- 
ereignty over the East Saxons, Kent, and East Anglia. 
Sussex was already a part of Wessex. It only remained 
that Northumbria should acknowledge his supremacy. In 
828 that acknowledgment was extorted without an appeal 
to the sword. Egbert thus became the eighth Bretwalda, or, 
as some have designated him, the first king of all England. 

Separate states had their kings under Egbert, as under 
those who had borne the title of Bretwalda before him. 
But from Cerdic, through Egbert, all the dynasties to which 
England has been subject have claimed to be descended. 
It is this fact, as much as his high authority, that has made 
the name of Egbert a landmark in English history, f 

So we see a century and a half pass away between the 
death of the seventh Bretwalda and the appearance of the 
eighth. But the power of Egbert, as Ave have intimated, was 
much greater than that of his predecessors, and gave better 
promise of continuance. "With him the title of Bretwalda 

* ' The same year Egbert laid waste West Wales from eastward to westward.' 
— Chron. Sac. ad an. 813. 

\ Chron. Sax. a.d. 4S8-S2Y. ' This Egbert,' says the chronicler, ' was the 
eighth king of the English nation who ruled over all the southern provinces, and 
those which are separated from the north by the Humber,' a.d. 827. Ethelwerd, 
ii. 9, 10, 12, 13-20. Flor. Wigorn. a.d. 672 et seq. Lappenberg, Hist. Eng. 
i. 251. Mackintosh, Hist. Eng. 



EISE OF TIIE ENGLISH MONAECHY — EGBERT. 125 

was a reality. Experience must often have suggested that b ° h °k n. 

this subdivision of territory, in a country which left no one 

state any strong natural means of defence against another, 
must be inseparable from much inquietude and suffering. 
Over the space of more than three centuries the same evils 
had been constantly arising from this source. The history 
of the Heptarchy had been in fact the history of a struggle 
for the mastery. In time, the master would be sure to come, 
and the more advanced civilization of "Wessex, together with 
its closer relation to the continent, seemed clearly to point 
to that kingdom as the seat of the future sovereignty. Even 
the ravages of the Danes, while they tended rather to dis- 
tract and weaken the several states than to unite them, 
operated favourably for Wessex, inasmuch as they fell in 
their greatest weight upon its rivals. 

But, beside the calamities which came from the frequent Evils from 

n i i • rn • it -i an elective 

wars of the different states with each other, there were monarchy. 
others, hardly less considerable, arising from the custom 
which made the monarchy in all those states in a great 
measure elective. The successor to the vacant throne was 
generally sought in the family of the deceased king. But 
the nearest of kin did not always succeed if not otherwise 
eligible. If of tender years, or of deficient capacity, the 
claim of an elder son might give place to that of a younger, 
or even to that of some collateral branch of the family. 
Hence, on the death of a king, there was often room for 
the question, who should succeed him ? Even in anticipa- 
tion of that event, factions were formed, intrigues were rife, 
and much mischief ensued even when the competitors did 
not proceed to the length of settling their differences by 
the sword. 

But there were strong reasons urged in favour of ^ytje 

° ~ right of suc- 

this custom, notwithstanding these grave consequences at- cessi ° 1 } ^ as 
tendant upon it. It should be remembered that this usage, 
and the ideas and feelings on which it was based, were 
essentially German. Our rude Saxon ancestors were not 
men to change their customs suddenly. It would require 
a considerably advanced state of civilization to enable them 
to see the advantages and the possibility of a wider unity, 



126 SAXONS AND DANES. 

so as to be willing to make the partial sacrifices necessary 
to secure that more general object. In their circumstances, 
they were not only likely to adhere to their separate organ- 
izations, but it was in the highest degree expedient that the 
right of succession should be left in this measure open. 
Everything seemed to depend on the character of the man 
at the head of their affairs. Hence, when the next in suc- 
cession was deemed incompetent, he might be superseded 
by the next, or by some remote kinsman. From these 
causes, the isolations of the Heptarchy, and the uncertain- 
ties of succession, would stand or fall together, and it is hard 
to say how much longer they would have continued to im- 
pede the general interest of the Germanic settlers in Britain, 
if new influences, supplying new motives, had not come 
into action. 

One of these influences we find in the Northman inva- 
sions. That event put an end to international feud, if it did 
not produce unity ; and, as we have said, favoured the rising 
power of Wessex. Another event, tending to the same 
result, we see in the introduction of Christianity. In the 
Christianity embraced by the Anglo-Saxons the Roman ele- 
ment was predominant, and that was in all respects an ele- 
ment of centralization. The civil law of Rome, and the 
ecclesiastical law which had long been growing up beside 
it, did everything by means of a strong centralized power. 
Theodore, a Greek, who came early to the see of Canter- 
bury, was intent on bringing all the churches of the Heptarchy 
under one scheme of discipline, so as out of them all to con- 
stitute in reality one church. Such an ignoring of the civil 
barriers by which each state was separated from the rest, 
was a strong anticipation of the time when all those states 
should constitute one kingdom. Wilfrid, bishop of York, a 
Saxon, filled the Heptarchy with disputes for more than 
forty years by his zeal for two objects ; first, to secure a strict 
uniformity in the religious observances of the churches in 
the different states ; and then to connect them all, as 
branches of one great national church, with the see of 
Rome. Men so earnest in working out such a policy, de- 
clared plainly that the monarchy over these churches which 



KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY EGBERT. 127 

in their mind was the most expedient, was not a sevenfold B ° 0K J 1 - 

. 1 Chap. 8. 

monarchy, with its endless strifes, but a central power, that 

should be strong in its great principle of unity. How the 
impediments in the way of this consummation in the time 
of Egbert were subsequently removed will appear in the next 
chapter. 



CHAPTER IV. 

EISE OF THE EXGLISII MONAKCHY ATHELSTAN. 

WE have seen, that during several centuries, neither the 
Britons on the one hand, nor the Picts and Scots, on 
the other, had been sufficiently formidable as antagonists 
to dispose the Anglo-Saxon states towards any combined 
course of action from a sense of common danger. But 
another cause of this indisposition towards union may be 
found where it has not hitherto been sought — viz., in the 
geographical positions of the several states of the Heptarchy 
towards each other. These positions were such as to fence 
off the whole border-land, both of the Welsh and of the 
Scots ; and each of the great Saxon states bordering on 
those bad neighbours judged itself competent to deal with 
its own foes along its own line of territory, and was dis- 
posed to content itself with that wardenship as being prop- 
erly its own. We read nothing accordingly of allied forces 
as carrying on the wars of the Wessex men westward, or of 
the Northumbrian men northward. Nor do we find the 
men of Mercia, whose lands lay between these two, acting 
at any time with either. The smaller states of the Hep- 
tarchy — Kent, Sussex, Essex, and East Anglia — were shut 
off, as we have shown, both from the Britons and the Scots, 
by the strong curved belt formed by the three greater states, 
Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. No force from "Wales 
or Scotland could reach those lesser states without passing 
through the territory of these greater states. It was, in con- 
sequence, from the three more powerful Saxon states, and 
not from the Celt, either in the west or in the north, that 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY ATHELSTAN. 129 

the four lesser states of the Heptarchy had to apprehend bo°^ ii. 

danger. 

But a new foe is now about to assail both the greater Novelty of 

the danger 

and the smaller kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain. This fr°m the 
foe is one who will seem to become only the more formida- 
ble the more he is resisted. He will necessitate a suspension 
of feuds. He will baffle in no small degree the best con- 
centrated means that can be directed against him. The 
enemy in this case, is a maritime enemy, and the sea-board 
of Britain is of great extent. The points of danger accord- 
ingly are many, and widely apart, and seem to require that 
the means of defence should be widely diffused. The great 
want of the exigency, accordingly, must be the want of 
confederation, and united action. But, from the nature of 
the attacks to J)e repelled, such action will be extremely 
difficult to realize. Every local force will be naturally 
disposed to look to its local interests and dangers. War 
between one Saxon state and another may come to an end, 
but combined operation for their common security will still 
be hard to accomplish. Had the concentration of the sov- 
ereignty in Anglo-Saxon Britain been realized earlier, the 
new invader might have experienced such a reception as 
would have taught him to seek his booty or his home else- 
where. But the English monarchy had barely come into 
existence, when it became exposed to dangers that 
would have tasked its resources to the utmost had it 
been old and consolidated. The power which was to pros- 
trate everything in France, might well prove formidable 
to the Saxons in Britain. Of the skill which experience 
gives in working from a centre, our ancestors of those days 
knew little ; and the intelligence and virtue necessary to 
subordinate the local to the general, prejudice to patriotism, 
was, as may be supposed, in a great degree wanting. 

Under the year 787 the Saxon Chronicle records the First de- 

„ _j ', , . - 1 n-nn T-in scent of the 

marriage ot Bnttric, the predecessor ot Egbert, to Eadburga, Danes. 
the daughter of Offa, and then adds : ' In his days first 
came three ships of Northmen, out of Hserethaland. * And 

* Lappenberg says that, by Haerethaland we are, probably, to ' understand 
Vol. I.— 9 



130 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 4. 



Country of 
the North- 
men — aim 
of their in- 
cursions. 



Causes of 
this move- 
ment. 



the reeve rode to the place, and would have driven them to 
the king's town, because he knew not who they were, and 
they there slew him. These were the first ships of Danish 
men which sought the land of the English nation.' The next 
record of this description was in 794. Under that year we 
read : ' The Heathens ravaged among the Northumbrians, and 
plundered Egferth's monastery at Done-mouth ; and there 
one of their leaders was slain, and also some of their ships 
were wrecked by a tempest ; and many of them were there 
drowned, and some came on shore alive, and they were 
soon slain at the river's mouth.' These are our only 
notices of the descents of these ' Northmen — Danish 
men ' — and ' Heathens,' as they are called, before the ac- 
cession of Egbert. 

The people thus variously designated .in the earliest 
notices of them in our annals, were as diversified in origin 
as the above terms would suggest. The shores of the Baltic, 
including Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, with their nu- 
merous islands, formed the country from which they came. 
What the Saxons had been in the sixth century, the Danes 
had become, in nearly all respects, in the ninth century — 
pirates ; but pirates capable of prosecuting their schemes of 
war and plunder upon a large scale, on the land or on the 
deep. After the first few experiments, their object in visiting 
Britain appears to have been to secure a settlement in the 
country, but a settlement which they seem to have contemplat- 
ed as to be made, not so much by subduing the natives, as by 
destroying them. 

"We know not the causes which prompted the first great 
Saxon movement. The increase of numbers, the pres- 
sure of new tribes migrating westward, rival leaderships 
and convulsions — any, or all of these circumstances, might 
have contributed to give the stream of races the direction 
then taken by them. But we are not left so much in un- 
certainty in regard to the causes which disposed the North- 
men to direct their course towards Britain, in preference to 
seekinp; a settlement on shores nearer to their own. The con 



Hordeland in Norway, famed for its sea-kings, and which, at a later period, sen* 
forth the unyielding discoverers of Iceland.' — Hist. ii. 12. 



EISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATHELSTAN. 131 

quests of Charlemagne in Germany, and the sternness with book il 

which he insisted that all subdued by him to the condition 

of subjects, should profess themselves Christians, opposed a 
formidable barrier to migration southward. A few years 
only had intervened since the achievements of Charlemagne, 
in Germany, when these invaders begin to make their appear- 
ance in this country. It should be stated, also, that our own 
aristocratic law of primogeniture was rigorously enforced 
among those northern hordes. The eldest son inherited the 
property of his father. The younger sons were left to make 
acquisitions for themselves by such means as should appear to 
them expedient. Hence the Corsair life so commonly assumed 
among that people, and the ease with which a chief of capacity 
and daring could attract followers to his standard. The ter- 
rible scourge which came thus into action, passed along the 
shores of Flanders, Holland, France, and Ireland, and 
fell with memorable effect on Britain. * 

In 832 the Danes appeared in the Thames, ravaged the 
• Isle of Sheppey, and retired unmolested with their spoil. 
In the year following, an armament of five-and-thirty vessels 
entered the Dart, and Egbert, after a stubborn engagement, 
was compelled to leave the enemy master of the field. 
Two years later, another force landed in Cornwall, and pre- 
vailed on some of the Cornish Britons to join their ranks. 
But in the next battle victory was on the side of the Sax- 
ons. Egbert died the following year. 

It was now evident that the object of the Danes was to intentions 

. . . , J , , of the 

secure a permanent looting m the country, and not simply Danes. 
to possess themselves of booty. Measures were taken to 
guard the coast more effectually. Military officers were 
stationed from place to place, that on the approach of an 
enemy the armed men of the district might be assem- 
bled to resist a landing. In the first year of Ethelwulf, 
who succeeded his father Egbert, three separate armaments 
appeared off the coast of Britain. The king opposed him- 
self to one of these, but with what success is unknown. 

* Mallet's Northern Antiquities. Lappenberg, ii. 10-18, and note by 
Thorpe. Turner's Anglo-Saxons, i. book iv. c. 1, 2. 
f Chron. Sax. ad an. 832-836. 



132 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. The force which landed at Southampton was defeated by the 
men of Hampshire ; but that which landed at Portland pre- 
vailed against the men of Dorset. The army which made 
its appearance in Lincolnshire in 838 was more powerful 
than any that had preceded it. The men who encountered 
the invaders perished by the sword or in the marshes ; and 
the enemy ravaged the country at pleasure from the Hum- 
ber to the Thames. The next year battles were fought, 
with great loss of life, at Canterbury, Rochester, and near 
London. 

In 840 Ethelwulf led his men against a force which had 
landed from thirty-five ships, but was defeated. The next 
four years in the Saxon Chronicle are blank ; but under the 
year 851 we find the following record : This year, Ceorl, the 
ealdorman, with the men of Devonshire, fought against the 
heathen men at Wicanbeorg, and there made great slaughter, 
and got the victory. And the same year king Athelstan, 
and Ealchere the ealdorman, fought on shipboard, and slew 
a great number of the enemy at Sandwich in Kent, and took, 
nine ships, and put the others to flight ; and the heathen 
men remained for the first time over the winter in Thanet. 
And the same year came three hundred and fifty ships to 
the mouth of the Thames, and the crews landed and took 
Canterbury and London by storm, and put to flight Beorht- 
wulf, king of the Mercians, with his army, and then went 
south over the Thame into Surry ; and there king Ethel- 
wulf and his son Ethelbald, with the army of the "West 
Saxons, fought against them at Aclea [Ockley], and there 
made the greatest slaughter among the heathen army that 
we have heard reported to the present day.' 

But these partial successes did not free the country from 
the Northmen. In 853 there was destructive warfare in 
Thanet between the ' heathen men' on the one side, and the 
men of Kent and Sussex on the other ; and under the year 
855 we find the following significant entry in the Chronicle 
above cited : ' This year the heathen men for the first time 
remained over the winter in Sheppey ; and the same year 
King Ethelwulf gave by charter the tenth of his land 
throughout the kingdom for the glory of God and his own 



KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY ATHELSTAN. 133 

eternal salvation. And the same year he went to Home in book ii. 
great state, and dwelt there twelve months, and then re- — - 
turned homewards.' The reader would probably think that 
the king who could be absent from his domain for such a 
space of time, at such a season, and on such an errand, was 
not inaptly described by Malmesbury, as a man more fitted 
to wear a cowl, than to wield a sceptre.* Ethelwulf died 
two years after his return from Home. 

Ethelbald and Ethelbert, sons of Ethelwulf, had distin- 
guished themselves in the resistance made to the Danes, 
and had given an appearance of vigour to the reign of their 
father which the king himself could never have imparted to 
it. But history gives us no account of the military achieve- 
ments of these princes during the short period of their sove- 
reignty. Ethelbald reigned two years only ; Ethelbert 
died in 865, having reigned five years. Ethelbert was 
succeeded by Ethelred, the third of the sons of Ethel- 
wulf. 

It is from the accession of Ethelred to the throne of Wes- Accession 

of Ethelred, 

sex, at a time when so much was expected from Wessex bv brother »f 

' i i i Alfred. 

the other states, that we have to date the most terrible suc- 
cesses and devastations of the Northmen. The struggle 
now becomes national. The question now to be decided is, 
whether the Dane or the Saxon is to be the future possessor 
of England. From the armaments of the invader, it is 
clear that the object of his enterprise is thus large. The 
Saxons were now made to feel that the danger affected all, 
and could be resisted only by a union embracing all. But 
the history of the ravages which become so wide-spread 
from this time has some antecedents that should be men- 
tioned. 

In the last year of Ethelbert the Danes made a descent storyof 
on Northumbria. That kingdom had assumed a sort of in- Lodbrog. 
dependence since the death of Egbert ; and at this time 
two chiefs, Osbert and Ella, had filled it with dissensions, 

* Dr. Lingard {Hist. i. 211 et seq.) takes exception to this censure of Malmes- 
bury, and to soften the reproach cast upon Ethelwulf, and on the superstitious 
influences which made him what he was, the historian has represented the danger 
from the Northmen in this reign as much less than we know it to have been. — 
Chron. Sax. Asser, Vita Alfred. 



134: SAXONS AND DANES. 

£0°^ i r - as competitors for rule. Ella at once turned his arms 

' against the Northmen, defeated them, and made their leader 

prisoner. It proved that these depredators were only a 
remnant of a much larger gathering, whose point of desti- 
nation had been the coast of Britain. But many vessels had 
been wrecked ; and the chief who had been captured, was 
found to be no other than Ragnar Lodbrog, a man whose 
deeds had made his name the terror of every coast from the 
Baltic to Ireland. Twenty years since he had ascended the 
Seine, made himself master of Paris, and surrendered it to 
the Franks on condition of receiving 7000 pounds of silver 
as the price of its ransom. Ella doomed the veteran ma- 
rauder to death. He was cast into a dungeon of venomous 
snakes ; and the poetry of his people describes him as con- 
soling himself in his suffering by predicting that the ' cubs' 
— meaning his sons — would take good recompense for the 
loss of the ' boar.' * 

Enterprise Tliis was in 865. In the next year Inguar and Ubbo, 

of Inguar ^ ° 

and ubbo. sons of Ragnar, found themselves at the head of twenty 
thousand men, who were ready to share the fortunes of their 
chiefs, and to avenge the fat e of their father. The arma- 
ment appears to have been driven past the coast of North- 
umbria by unfavourable winds. But a landing was se- 
cured without opposition on the neighbour coast of East 
Anglia. This army, great as it may seem, was not deemed 
equal to the object contemplated. The winter of 866-7 
was in great part occupied in securing reinforcements, in 
collecting horses for cavalry, and in attempting to sow 
disunion among the natives. 

In February, the invaders began their march towards 
Northumbria, and in a fortnight they had fixed their head- 
quarters in York. Osbert and Ella, laying aside their dif- 
ferences, joined in an attack upon the enemy in the neigh- 
bourhood of that city. The onset was in favour of the as- 
sailants ; but in the fight within the city the courage of the 
Northmen became desperate, Osbert and the most distin- 
guished of his followers were slain, and it was the fate of 

* Asser, Vita Alf. Chron. Sax. Saxo Grammat. 176. Turner's Anglo- 
Saxons, book iv. c. 3. 



EISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATIIELSTAN. 135 

Ella to fall alive into tlie hand of the sons of Ragnar. His B o° K ?• 

° Cuap. 4. 

ribs were severed, his lnngs were torn through the crevice 

thus made, and salt was thrown on the wounds. This kind 
of death, horrible as it may seem, was not uncommon 
among the Northmen. 

From that day England north of the Humber may be 
said to have been subdued. An army was stationed at 
York to secure the possession, and to protect in some meas- 
ure the industry of the country ; while a second, and a 
much larger army, directed its way southward. 

But at Nottingham the progress of this force was The check 

° at Nottin"- 

checked. The army opposed to it was one of great strength, ham. 
It was led by the king of Mercia, and by Ethelred and his 
brother Alfred, from "Wessex. The Northmen shrank from 
the hazard of an engagement, and surrendered the place on 
condition of being allowed to retrace their steps northward. 
The Danes from Nottingham then rejoined their country- 
men at York.* 

But the check thus given to the enemy was transient. 
The three years which followed before the accession of 
Alfred to the throne of Wessex, were years of memorable 
calamity to the people of Saxon Britain. Inguar, re- 
nowned for his far-seeing craft, and Ubbo, no less renowned 
for his ferocious bravery, led their forces, without opposi- 
tion, through Mercia into East Anglia. Another horde of 
adventurers, in the meantime, landed at Lindsey in Lincoln- 
shire, who possessed themselves of the rich monastery of 
Bardeney, plundered it, razed it to the ground, and put all 
the inmates to the sword, f 

In the absence of Burhed, the king of Mercia, who chose Battle of 
to be otherwise employed, Algar, a young ealdorman, cele- 
brated for his patriotism and courage, is said to have sum- 
moned the bolder men of the marshes to his standard. 
Many obeyed his call, even monks are described as ex- 
changing the cowl for the helmet, and as resolved to defend 
their Christian homes to the last against the merciless 
pagans. Tolius, a lay brother of high military reputation, 

* Chron. Sax. Asser. Snorrc, 108. Pet. Olaus, 111. 
f Sax. Chron. Asser. 



136 SAXONS AND DANES. 

^n^p I 1 ' ^ e< ^ tne con tingent of this description from the Abbey of 

Croyland. The chivalrous men thus brought together faced 

the enemy at a place called Kesteven. In the desperate 
encounter on that spot three Danish kings were slain, and 
Algar and his followers chased the Danes to the entrance 
of their camp. Kight then came on. In the morning came 
the alarming tidings that five kings and five jarls had 
reached the Danish camp during the night. Three-fourths 
of Algar's men now deemed their condition hopeless, and 
fled. But the small band left took the sacrament from the 
ecclesiastics, now their companions in arms, and resolved 
to oppose themselves to the last to the odds against them. 

The Danes buried their slaughtered kings, and then 
sharpened their weapons for the revenge to follow. But 
the wings and centre of the Saxons were found to be immo- 
vable. So well had they chosen their position, and such 
was their steady bravery, that through the whole day they 
defended themselves against showers of arrows, and the hea- 
vy s\v< >rds of their assailants. Towards evening the Danes 
feigned a retreat. Algar had cautioned his men against 
this stratagem. But it was in vain. They descended in 
chase of the foe — and then began the carnage. For now 
they were encompassed by numbers, and the Saxons fell on 
every side. Algar and Tolius, indeed, with a few faithful 
adherents, regained the hill-side, and there kept the enemy 
at bay, until, covered with wounds, their bodies were added 
to the heaps of the slain. The few youths who gave report 
of this tragedy to the monks of Croyland, were the only 
survivors. 

jestrnctivo From that battle-field the ' heathen army ' might be 

larch of J ° 

iic Danes, tracked by the conflagrations which marked its way. The 
wealthy abbeys of Croyland and Medeshamstede were de- 
stroyed, and no lives that could be reached were spared. 
The head of the abbot of Croyland was struck ofl on the 
steps of the altar. In storming Medeshamstede a son of 
Bagnar was wounded ; and, to avenge it, Ubbo, his brother, 
is said to have inflicted the death-wound on the abbot and 
eighty monks with his own hand. Huntingdon and Ely 
shared the fate of the places above named. The nuns of 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATHELSTAN. 137 

Ely, who were many of them from wealthy and noble fam- book il 

ilies, suffered indignities worse than death. Thetford was 

the next place taken, and that also was given to the flames. 

The good king Edmund opposed them in vain, and met a Martyrdom 

martyr's death at their hands. The name of St. Edmund Edmund. 

stands hiffh in the Roman calendar in after ages. East An- 
ts o 

glia now ceased to be a Christian state. The pagan leader 
Guthorm claimed it as his own. Mercia had shown nothing 
of its ancient prowess in this hour of trial. It rested with 
the West Saxons to determine the race and the faith that 
should obtain in the future of Britain.* 

We have said that the Northmen now invaded Britain The East- 

Anglian 

in such numbers as to show that their obiect was not so Da ? e ?i n - 
much transient plunder as a settlement. But no country sex - 
could be productive under such masters. "With them, to 
possess was to impoverish. Moreover, their restless and rov- 
ing habits, after a short interval of quiet, often became too 
strong to be controlled by their new resolutions. Nor was 
it possible that they should be without some sense of dan- 
ger, so long as a large portion of the country remained in 
the hands of a people who might possibly become strong, 
and who would not fail to be intensely disposed to use their 
strength in avenging the wrongs of the past. Some of 
these barbarian hordes, accordingly, having secured their 
booty, returned for a season to their homes ; while others, 
who might have been expected to settle in the acquisitions 
they had made, are found seeking new excitement in new 
adventures. 

Under such influences, in the early part of the year 871, 
a large division of the ' heathen army ' in East Anglia di- 
rected their course towards the lands of the "West Saxons. 
This army was led by the two kings Bagseg and TIalfdene, 

* That the Danes marched over the territory above named, and left upon it 
the terrible traces of their presence, we learn from the Saxon Chronicle, Asser, 
and other sources. But for the particulars concerning Algar, and the battle of 
Kesteven, we are indebted to the more doubtful authority of the history attrib- 
uted to Ingulf. I am disposed, however, on many grounds, rather to credit than 
distrust that narrative in this instance. It describes nothing which is not charac- 
teristic of the historical personages named, and of the struggle generally between 
the belligerents. In this case there was nothing to be gained by invention, and 
the substance of the narrative is certainly truthful. 



133 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 4. 



Battle of 
Beading. 



Battle of 
Ashdune. 



by Guthorm, by two distinguislied chiefs named Sidroc, 
and by the jarls — or earls — Osbearn, Frene, and Harald. 
They ascended the Thames in their ships, and sending off 
detachments in different directions, overran the coast-lands 
and the south provinces of the "West Saxon territory in great 
multitudes. The main division penetrated as far as Read- 
ing, in Berkshire, and made themselves masters of that 
place, as a favourable point from which to convey their 
plunder by means of the river to the sea. 

On the third day after their arrival, a part of this divi- 
sion mounted their horses, and sallied forth into the country 
in search of spoil. The other part remained in the town, 
and occupied themselves in strengthening its fortifications. 
The men of Wessex had not expected such visitors at so 
early a season. But Ethelwulf, an ealdorman of that dis- 
trict, called all possessed of arms in his neighbourhood to- 
gether, and determined to attack the marauders before they 
should rejoin their confederates at Reading. lie met them 
at a place called Englafield. In the resolute encounter 
which followed, one of the jarls was slain, and the rest 
were put to flight." 

Four days later, king Ethelred and his brother Alfred 
appeared before the walls of Reading. The Danes were 
slow to accept the challenge thus given to them. But while 
the Saxons were busy in forming an encampment, the ene- 
my rushed forth upon them, and took them by surprise. 
The battle which ensued was obstinate. The prospect of 
victory changed for some time from side to side. In the 
end the heathen men prevailed, and the body of the brave 
ealdorman Ethelwulf was among those who had fallen, f 

Enough, however, had taken place to show that the men 
of Wessex were likely to furnish much graver employment 
to their enemies than had been imposed upon them in the 
other Saxon states.;}: Four days only had passed when 
Ethelred and Alfred were again prepared to take the field. 
Their place of meeting was Ashdune (or Aston) in Berkshire. 
The battle on that spot was a real trial of strength. The 



* Chron. Sax. 871. Asser, Vit. Alf. 

\ Chron. Sax. a.d. 871. Asser, Vita Alf 



% Ibid. 



KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATHELSTAN. 139 

Danes felt that it became them to avail themselves of every B °°^ Im- 
possible advantage. The position they had taken was on 

an eminence, crowned with a short thick underwood, from 
which, as a kind of breastwork, it would be easy to gall the 
Saxons in attempting to reach the summit. Alfred was 
early at the foot of the hill, and prompt in his preparations 
for the fray. But Ethelred was at mass, and though ap- 
prised that the moment for action had come, refused to move 
until the last word should be pronounced by the priest. 
The king should have given the order for battle, but Alfred, 
having waited until waiting longer became perilous, raised 
the signal, and speedily the weapons of his followers were 
in full play upon the enemy. The fight became stubborn — 
destructive — hand to hand. Ethelred soon joined his divi- 
sion, and charged boldly on the men under the kings Bag- 
seg and Halfdene. Brave deeds were done by the North- 
men on that day, but braver by the Saxons. At length 
the former began to waver, the Saxons rushed on with new 
courage, and the slaughter which ensued is described by an- 
cient writers as the greatest England had ever witnessed. 
Ethelred slew the king Bagseg with his own hand. Among 
the dead were the two Sidrocs, the three jarls Osbearn, 
Frene, and Harald, with many more who were accounted 
the flower and hope of the Northmen. The Saxons chased 
the fugitives from Aston to Reading, strewing the whole 
way with the slain.* 

But the calamity of these times was, that to sweep off 
these barbarians on any scale seemed to be to little pur- 
pose. The void of to-day was filled up with swarms of 
new-comers to-morrow. The hive which sent them forth 
seemed to be inexhaustible. Thus, within a few weeks af- 
ter the battle of Ashdune, came another at Basing in Hamp- 
shire, and another at Merton, near to Ashdune. In these 
engagements the West Saxons acquitted themselves with 
their wonted ability and courage ; but many of the bravest 
among them fell, and the enemy, though in neither case a 
victor, in both cases, to use the language of the old chroni- 
cle, ' kept the place of carnage.' It was at this juncture of 

* Asser, a.d. 871. Chron. Sax. 



140 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 4. 



Accession 
Of Alfred. 



Increased 
power of 
the Danes. 



affairs that Ethelred breathed his last — whether from wounds 
or natural causes is uncertain. His conduct on the whole 
had been such as to entitle him to the esteem and affection 
of his subjects. It is in such circumstances that Alfred, 
since known as the ' great,' comes to the possession of king- 
ly power.* 

The character and reign of Alfred have many claims to 
our attention. Our concern in this place is simply with the 
military events of his career, and their result. The sons of 
Ethelred were children ; and there was much in the past, 
and everything in the present, to prepare men for seeing in 
Alfred the natural successor to the throne. 

In place of the court pageants usual on an accession, the 
scenes awaiting the new king were such as menaced every- 
thing most valued by himself and his subjects. The strife 
before them was deadly, its issue to the last degree doubtful. 
Soon after the battle of Merton, strong reinforcements join- 
ed the army at Reading. Bolder incursions were made into 
the neighbouring country. "Weeks passed and Alfred found 
it impossible to raise an army capable of meeting such an 
enemy. His loss from the odds opposed to him at Wilton 
added to the discouragement of his subjects, and to the 
sense of weakness which weighed at this time on his own 
spirit. In twelve months, eight regular engagements had 
taken place, besides almost incessant skirmishing. Great 
had been the losses of the Northmen, but great also had 
been the losses of the king. In the meanwhile Alfred's sup- 
plies of men, expert in the use of the weapons of war, did not 
keep pace with those of his enemies ; nor was he at liberty 
to resort to plunder to replenish his exchequer. The issue 
was, that in the first year of his reign he consented, along 
with his thanes, to buy off the invaders. But it soon be- 
came known that all such compacts with that people were 
worse than useless. The Mercians had tried the expedient. 
It impoverished them without giving them the promised se- 
curity. In 874 that once powerful kingdom ceased to exist. 
In that year, Burhed, its last king, sought an asylum in 
Rome. One Ceolwulf was set up by the Danes in his 



* Asser, 21-24. Chron. Sax. a.d. 871. Flor. Wigorn. 



KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONAKCHY — ATHELSTAN. 141 

stead, but was used, as the Romans often used such men, as B ° 0K n - 

. . -, Chap. 4. 

a tool to bear the odium of their own extortions. Many of 

the Danes now settled in that country, and gave names to 
the localities of their choice which have descended to our 
times.* 

From 875 to 878 the gloom thickened over Anglo-Sax- 
on Britain. The old districts being exhausted, the pirate 
hordes began the exploring of new ground. A second ef- 
fort was made to bribe them to a distance, and to bind 
them by special means to their promise ; but the same per- 
fidy followed. They possessed themselves of Wareham and 
Exeter, as places of strength, and places whence they might 
readily descend to the sea with such spoil as they should 
obtain. 

Durinsr these troubled years, however, the naval history Alfred 

o •/ • » i i raises a 

of England may be said to have commenced. Alfred built fleet - 
or collected a number of ships, manned them with brave 
seamen, and by this means destroyed the greater part of a 
Danish fleet, which had been driven by foul weather on the 
coast of Dorset. This was in 877. The armament thus 
scattered or annihilated, was destined for the relief of Exeter. 
The besieged, seeing no chance of succour, capitulated, giv- 
ing hostages to abstain from further hostilities in "Wessex. 
But, reaching Gloucester, they renewed the work of pillage 
and destruction. The impoverished condition to which they 
had reduced all the Saxon kingdoms, prompted the banditti 
which now covered the land, to explore the barren homes 
of the Welsh, and of the Picts and Scots. But that proved 
a bootless errand. The last effort made at this crisis against 
these sons of the destroyer, was at Kynwith, where a feeble 
garrison resisted a rigorous siege, and surprising the besieg- 
ers in a sally, destroyed more than a thousand of them. 
And now the time had come in which the high spirit of the 
Saxon race appeared to have forsaken them. Many fled 
with such moveables as they could take with them to other 
countries ; the rest seem to have learned to look on their 
unhappy condition as a destiny, and to submit.f 

*„Chron. Sax. a.d. 871-8'74. Asser, 24-26. 
f Chron. Sax. a.d. 873-877. Asser, 24-29. 



142 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 

Chap. 4. 

The lowest, 
stage of dis- 
order and 
depression. 



Alfred 
leaves his 
retreat. 



Popular feeling is ever liable to these alternations. Its 
excesses in elevation and depression come from the same 
cause. To yield to the pressure of the many, whether for 
good or evil, is natural to man. Where all seem to obey, 
it is hard for the individual to resist, But there are some 
noble natures to whom such self-sustaining power is given, 
and who can hope where hope seems to have forsaken 
all beside. Alfred the king was one of these. He might 
have gathered his staff together, and have found high mili- 
tary service in other lands ; or he might have journeyed as a 
pilgrim to that old Rome upon whose shrines he had gazed 
in his boyhood. In that case, what would have been the 
future of English history ? The old northern paganism — 
which the Saxon had abandoned — would have again become 
ascendant. The religion of the Cross would probably have 
ceased. The barbaric customs of Scandinavia would have 
found a new home in Britain. The near prospect of that 
powerful English monarchy, towards which so many in- 
fluences had seemed to be converging, would have vanished. 
This island might have become, and have long continued, 
the great rendezvous of sea-kings — the base from which they 
would have gone forth to spread their devastations, super- 
stitions, and barbarisms over the fairest provinces of Europe. 

Alfred could believe that this was not to be. He could 
have faith in God. To prevent such calamity, he could 
watch his last watch, offer his last prayer, do his last pos- 
sible deed. It is clear that he must have thought it pos- 
sible that even from this state of things there might be a 
return, and that it behoved him to be vigilant, patient, and 
ready. The selfish did not rule in this man — but the hu- 
mane, the patriotic, the religious ; and he has his reward. 
The seeds of the coming England were in that great heart ; 
though its ground-spring of action, we can readily suppose, 
was a simple sense of duty. 

During the winter of 877-8 the king concealed himself 
among the woods and lowlands of Somersetshire. Miser- 
able was the shelter there found, and difficult often was it 
to obtain the poorest means of subsistence for himself and 
his few faithful followers. But with the new life of the 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY ATHELSTAN". 143 

spring-time came new hope to the fugitives. We meddle £ 00K * L 

not now with the traditionary or the doubtful. Suffice it 

to say, that in the spring of 878 Alfred quitted his retreat 
at Athelney, and called the faithful men of the district to 
his standard, and that he soon found himself surrounded by 
a brave and loyal host, who gazed upon their king as upon 
one who had been dead and was alive again. Some weeks 
passed in collecting greater numbers, in severe military ex- 
ercises, and in some successful skirmishing. "Wilts and 
Hants, as well as Somerset, sent their supplies of men and 
means. 

The head-quarters of the Danes was at Chippenham. ^" a j u °^ e 
Alfred marched in that direction. But the place where the 
two armies met was Ethadune, probably Edington, near 
Westbury, in Wiltshire. The White Horse on the side of 
Edington Hill, seen at different points to a distance of many 
miles across the vale beneath, is still recognized by the 
traveller as commemorative of the death-struggle which 
once raged on that eminence. The conflict was desperate 
on the part of the Danes, but decisive on the side of the 
Saxons. The Northmen were chased from that high border 
of Salisbury Plain, down the slope towards Chippenham, 
and no quarter was given. Chippenham itself was besieged, 
and after fourteen days was compelled to capitulate. The 
veteran Guthorm, the commander of the Danes in that 
place, some weeks later, professed himself a Christian. His 
chiefs for the most part followed his example. Alfred 
himself stood sponsor for his old enemy, and, though the 
passions of the past returned upon him at times with great 
force, and rendered him still in some degree unfaithful to 
the trust reposed in him, Guthorm ended his days in com- 
parative tranquillity, as the possessor of East Anglia, and 
still adhering to his new faith. Before his decease, the 
heathenism he had introduced had nearly disappeared.* 

Alfred deemed it wise to favour the disposition of the Alfred's 
Danes to remain in the land, stipulating, however, as the Guthorm. 
condition, that they should conform themselves to the order 
and habits of settled and civilized communities. He ap- 

* Chron. Sax. a.d. 878. Asser, 31 et seq. 



144 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



Effects of 
the wars 
with the. 
Dunes. 



book ii. pears to have thought that men so acquiring a home in the 

country, would come by degrees to have their own motives 

for resisting further invasion ; and that mixing gradually 
with the Saxons, they would contribute to the stability 
of the throne, and to the future unity and progress of 
the nation. The mischiefs of this policy were great, but 
possibly those of a contrary course would have been 
greater. 

We have seen that the invasions of the Northmen began 
to be formidable in the reign of Egbert. The battle of 
Ethadune brought eighty years of war and destruction to 
a temporary close.* Great was the check given to all 
things condncive to social progress by these devastations. 
The previous wars of the Eeptarchy, frequent and pregnant 
with evil as they were, had not been inconsistent with signs 
of improvement, both in social and religious life. But on 
all this the Danish invasions came as the hand of a de- 
stroyer. One good, however, came out of this wide march 
of evil. The reconstruction of the Heptarchy was impos- 
sible. Its machinery had been bo crushed, it> elements had 
been so consumed, that no one could hope to succeed in 
attempting to replace it, or anything resembling it. North- 
umbria, partly from the ravages of the Northmen, and 
partly from its own dissensions, had almost ceased to Ik 1 a 
kingdom. The same was still more true of Mercia. Wis- 
sex, with its race of Cerdic represented in Alfred, became 
the destined centre' of unity for the coming time. The 
natural course of the smaller eastern states was, that they 
should avail themselves of the safety which the weak may 
derive from their friendly relations to the strong. 

The years of pence which Alfred had won by successful 
war, were sedulously and wisely employed in adding to the 
military strength of his dominions. Mercia he had assigned 
to the able oversight of the ealdorman Ethelred, his son-in- 
law. The "Welsh princes readily acknowledged his author- 
ity ; and the East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes were, 
in effect, if not in form, subject to it.f 

* The arms of the Northmen were now turned mainly towards France. 
Ckron. Sax. a.d. 881-887. 

f Asser, 36 et seq. Chron. Sax. a.d. 886, 894. 



Alfred's 
precautions. 



KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONAKCHY — ATHELSTAN. 145 

Nothing less than the precaution thus taken could have B ° OK n - 

° l Chap. 4. 

saved the kingdom from the hands of the Northmen to- m - — 

° The mva- 

wards the close of the reign of Alfred. Hastings, a Danish ?i (,1 \ . under 

~ o ' _ Hastincs. 

chief who had traversed Gaul and other countries almost at 
pleasure during the last forty years, resolved in 893 to at- 
tempt the establishment of a kingdom for himself in Brit- 
ain. His armaments were commensurate with his design. 
One fleet of eighty ships, conducted by Hastings himself, 
ascended the Swale, and took up its position on the north- 
ern coast of Kent ; the other, consisting of two hundred and 
fifty ships, landed its warriors on the south coast, near the 
point now known as Komney Marsh. Alfred took posses- 
sion of a high ground between these opposite points, and 
brought so much sagacity to his plans, that the movements 
of his antagonists, expert and treacherous as they proved, 
were thoroughly counter-worked. Baffled and scattered, 
they succeeded in making their devastations visible in 
widely distant parts of the island ; but their great scheme,, 
after three years of toil, frustration, and. loss, ended in fail- 
ure. The Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes became 
so far the partisans of Hastings as to suggest the expediency 
of measures that should secure a less doubtful allegiance 
from that quarter. Guthorm was now dead ; and Hastings 
subsequently found his home in the city of Chartres, the 
adjacent territory being ceded to him, on certain feudal con- 
ditions, by Charles the Simple.* 

In England, the Danes were now the dangerous element. K a i? ns 

O > o better or- 

Not a few of them had learnt to live peaceably ; but it was f^an tho 
evident that their old propensities were so strong in others Danes- 
as to dispose them to join almost any standard which prom- 
ised them a greater measure of independence and licence. 
"With regard to organization and government, however, the 
Danes were in the ninth century very much wkat the Sax- 
ons had been in the fifth and sixth centuries. Experience 
had made them familiar with the action of small confeder- 
acies. Combined action on a large scale they had to learn 
as time and circumstances only could teach them. On this 

* Chron. Sax. a.d. 894, 895. Asser. Ethelwerd. Flor. Wigorn. ad an. 
893, 894. 

Vol. I.— 10 



UG 



SAXOXS AND DANES. 



Power of 
Edward 
and of 
Athelstan 



Invasion 

under 

Anlaff. 



Battle of 
Brunan- 

burgh. 



B c°ha? i L mate rial point the education of the Anglo-Saxons, as forced 

upon them by the events of the last fonr centuries, gave 

them a decided advantage. 

Under Edward, the son and successor of Alfred, the 
Anglo-Saxons availed themselves of this advantage with 
much effect. Before his death in 924, Edward had fully 
subdued the disaffected in the East Anglian states and in 
Northumbria, had annexed Mercia formally to Wessex, 
and was the acknowledged sovereign of a larger territory 
than had owned the authority of the most fortunate of his 
predecessors.* But if the authority of Edward exceeded 
that of the most potent among his precursors, the authority 
of Athelstan, who next ascended the throne of Cerdic, was 
still more weighty and extended. He asserted his sove- 
reignty, and with success, over Nortlmmbria. He taught 
the Britons of Wales and Cornwall the expediency of sub- 
mission. Even the king of Scotland was among his depend- 
ents. 

Great, however^ as was this power of Athelstan, a crisis 
came in which he needed all his resources. He had given 
his daughter Editha in marriage to a Northman named 
Sightric, who had come to be possessed of a kind of roy- 
alty over Northumbria. Sightric died within a year after 
his marriage and his baptism. Athelstan then seized on 
Northumbria in right of his daughter. But Anlaff, one of 
the sons of Sightric, was not disposed to submit to this 
summary proceeding. He fled before the power of Athel- 
stan at the time. But about ten years later he appeared in 
the Humber as the commander of a fleet consisting of more 
than six hundred vessels. The warriors in this confedera- 
tion were mostly sea-kings and their followers, but ulti- 
mately the army included many Northumbrian Danes, with 
larger contingents from the Scots and the Britons. 

The two armies met at Brunanburgh in ISTorthumbria. 
The numbers were greater than had been opposed to each 
other on the same field in British history since the issue of 
the struggle between the Celts and the Romans. The battle 



Chron. Sax. a.d. 901-924. Ingulph. 28. 



RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY ATHELSTAN. 147 

of Brimanbiirgli raged from morning until evening ; but book il 
victory was with the Saxons. Anlaff escaped. Among the — - 
dead were five sea-kings and seven jarls, besides a son of 
the kino- of Scotland. The issue of that day made Athel- Athcistan 

p J kins* of all 

stan truly ' King of England.' Egbert, and even Alfred and England. 
Edward, ruled England as kings of "Wessex. But the mon- 
archy of Cerdic now absorbed every other within the limits 
of the country to which the name of England has since been 
given. * 

* Chron. Sax. Malms, de Reg. lib. ii. 26. 



/ 



CHAPTER V. 

KISE OF THE DANISH MONAKCHY. 

B c°°a* 5 L A THELSTAK was succeeded by his half-brother Edmund, 
Edmiind "^ * nen about eighteen years of age. Edmund had ac- 
Atheistan quired reputation as a soldier at Brunanburgh. But the 
&£«£ fear which the genius of Athelstan had inspired having 
tion ' passed away, the Danes of Xorthumbria invited Anlaff to 

try his fortune anew in England. The Danes of Mercia, 
and many in East Anglia, it is said, joined in the revolt. 
Even Wulfstan, the archbishop of York played the traitor. 
Edmund encountered the enemy at Tarn worth. The issue 
there was in favour of the insurgents. The scale, however, 
soon turned to the other side. The king besieged the rebels 
in Leicester ; and so menacing were his approaches, that 
Anlaff and "Wulfstan made their escape by night. The end 
was, that through the intervention of Odo, archbishop of 
Canterbury, himself the son of a Dane who had fought 
against Alfred, Anlaff was permitted to retain the sover- 
• eignty of the territory north of the Watling Street, and Ed- 
mund was reconciled to Wulfstan. But Anlaff died soon 
afterwards ; and the two chiefs, Anlaff and Regnald, who 
were allowed to divide his territory between them, were 
finally deprived of their sovereignty by Edmund, who de- 
clared himself master of Xorthumbria. The policy and 
the arms of Edmund were at length equally successful in 
the affairs of Wales and Scotland. * 

Edmund had reigned six years only when he fell by the 
dagger of Leof, an outlaw, during a religious festival at 

* Chron. Sax. a.d. 941-946. Flor. Wigorn. ad an. 924 et seq. Ethelwerd, 
chap. vi. Malms, de Reg. lib. ii. c. 7. 



EISE OF THE DANISH MONARCHY. 149 

Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire. He left two sons ; but b °ok ii. 

Cuap. 5. 



they were young children, and the "Witan chose Ed red his 
brother to be kina;. Edred was crowned by Archbishop Edred— 

* x continued 

Odo at Kingston. As usual, the first trouble of the new inquietude 

<-> from the 

sovereign came from the Danes of the northern counties. J 1 ?*™ - 

O brian 

The nine years of his reign were almost wholly occupied Danes - 
in quelling insurrection and faction in that part of his do- 
minions. But from this time we may date the final subjec- 
tion of Nbrthumbria. The death of Edred was the result of 
a disease from which he had suffered so long and so greatly, 
that the successes of his reign were attributed mainly to the 
able services of the notorious Dunstan, and to the wisdom 
of Turketul, the accredited minister of his affairs. * 

Edwy, the eldest son of Edmund, now became king, f^z 
His reign is chiefly remarkable from the feud between him P° wer - 
and the ecclesiastics of his time, especially with Dunstan. 
But these circumstances belong to the religious history of 
this period. It must suffice to say in this place, that a 
reign of two short years in the history of this unhappy 
prince, was more than enough to show that the time had 
come in which the civil power attempting to sustain itself 
in independence of the ecclesiastical, would need to be a 
power exercised with no ordinary firmness and sagacity, f 

Before the death of Edwy, Edgar, his younger brother, ? < * gar ~j* , i 
had taken possession of Mercia. He now became king, and rest - 
is designated in history as ' the peaceful.' Not that he was 
incapable of military enterprise, nor that his reign passed 
away without an unsheathing of the sword. But Edgar, 
though dissolute enough in his habits, was careful to profit 
by the experience of his brother, and to make friends of the 
ecclesiastics. He did much also to conciliate the foreign 
settlers in Britain, by ceding to them privileges in accord- 
ance with their national usages. Above all, he raised a 
powerful navy to guard the shores of his dominions. His 
ships, divided into several armaments, went forth every 
spring to protect the coast against further descents from the 

* Chron. Sax. a.d. 946 et seq. Florence Wigorn. ad an. 955-958. Malms. 
de Reg. lib. ii. c. 1. 

f For the Komanist version of the quarrel between Edwy and St. Dunstan see 
Dr. Lingard ; for a more faithful version of the affair see Lappenberg. 



150 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 5. 



Edward 

the martyr. 



Etholrod 
the Un- 
ready. 



vessels of the Northmen. The king himself sailed from 
year to year with them. By this time the most famous 
of the sea-kings had found settlements in various countries. 
The north was more quiet than it had been for some genera- 
tions past. And such adventurers as might be disposed 
towards new enterprises were taught by these signs of prep- 
aration to avoid the shores of Britain. Edgar was a man 
of intelligence and firmness, but as he died when not more 
than thirty years of age, these measures warrant us in sup- 
posing that he was influenced in his policy by heads of 
more experience than his own. In the ballad literature of 
the time he was lauded as the most powerful king that Eng- 
land had known. * 

Edgar left two sons, Edward and Ethelred ; the first 
thirteen years of age, the second seven. Factions, civil and 
ecclesiastical, embroiled the commencement of the reign of 
Edward ' the Martyr.' In this fact, together with his mur 
der, at the bidding of his step-mother Elfrida, while refresh- 
ing himself on a hunting excursion at her castle-gate, we 
possess nearly all we know concerning this ill-fated prince. 
Corfe Castle became memorable from this deed. Edward 
was then in the eighteenth year of his age, and the third 
of his reign, f 

Ethelred, the son of Elfrida, was now the only remaining 
prince of the blood. The fact that he was the son of the 
woman who had murdered his predecessor was felt as a 
difficulty. But it was not deemed a sufficient ground for pre- 
cluding him from the throne at the hazard of a civil war. 
The reign which had thus commenced in crime, is memo- 
rable for its shame and its disasters. If man could overlook 
blood-guiltiness, Providence seemed not so to do. The 
thirty-eight years during which Ethelred was king, are 
more full of suffering and humiliation than the like inter- 
val in any other period of English history. 

The Northmen begin to descend anew on the coast, in 
greater or smaller numbers, from year to year. After a 

* Chron. Sax. a.d. 957 et seq. Florence Wigorn. ad an. 960-975. Malms. 
de Reg. lib. ii. c. 8. There is much in the reign of Edgar that seems to confirm 
the account in Ingulf of the high capacity and influence of Turketul. 

\ Chron. Sax. Malms, de Reg. lib. ii. c. 9. 



RISE OF TIIE DANISH MONARCHY. 151 

while, no province, from the Land's End to the Orkneys, B q^ g l 
or from East Anglia to St. Davids, is found to be secure from 
their approach. Everywhere they repeat the plunder, the 
devastation, and the merciless destruction of human life, 
which had marked the path of their precursors two centu- 
ries since. In the meanwhile attempts to concentrate the 
force of the country for its common safety are so feebly 
prosecuted, and are so easily frustrated by local factions 
and selfish considerations, that failure follows upon failure 
in sickening succession. Instances of individual or local 
courage and self-devotion occur, but end in nothing, from 
the want of such a central influence as might secure unity 
by inspiring confidence. The command of such forces as 
were raised, was entrusted, for the most part, to men who, 
from their Danish origin, their Danish connexions, or other 
causes, betray, one after another, the confidence reposed in 
them ; and, strange to say, are seen rising to new responsi- 
bilities only to repeat their old treasons. Cruel to the 
weak, Ethelred was a craven before the strong. Seasons 
that should have been employed in collecting and marshal- 
ling the strength of his kingdom, were surrendered to selfish 
and sensuous indulgence. Too ready was he to believe 
that the enemy with whom he had to do was one who might 
be bribed to seek other quarters, or at least into forbearance 
and quiet as settlers. Large sums were collected for this 
purpose, from time to time ; but the oaths exacted from 
the men who received them were forgotten almost as soon 
as uttered. By this wretched policy Ethelred became a tool 
in the hands of the enemy, by whose means the plunder of 
his own subjects was made more easy and effectual than 
would otherwise have been possible. 

Twenty-four years had passed since the accession of Massacre oi 
Ethelred, and the greater part of those years marked by the 
circumstances above mentioned, when the king resolved on 
a deed which has covered him with infamy, and which, 
as might have been foreseen, was to bring heavy retribu- 
tion in its train. It was no secret that the Saxons regarded 
the Danes resident among them with distrust and hatred. 
The relation of these people to the common enemy ; and 



152 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B cm.p "' st *^ more tne ^ act tnat they na d generally shown themselves 

much more disposed to favour than to repel the invaders, 

had given a special intensity to the feeling ordinarily sepa- 
rating race from race.* Ethelred, it would seem, had 
ceased to expect fidelity from this class of his subjects ; and, 
to save himself from the machinations of traitors within 
the camp, he determined that an attempt should be made 
utterly to destroy them. 

In the spring of the year 1002 secret orders were issued, 
that on the approaching religious festival in honour of St. 
Brice, the Saxons should fall unawares upon the Danes, and 
put them to death. The orders were kept secret ; and on 
the appointed day the massacre ensued, the fury of the pop- 
ulace in many places adding not a little cruelty to the work of 
destruction. It is supposed that the Danes must have num- 
bered at this time nearly a third of the inhabitants of Eng- 
land. "We may be sure, therefore, that this destruction was 
rather local than general. It has been thought that the 
Danes whose removal was meditated were those only who, 
as retainers to the nobles, wore arms, and who had so often 
turned the arms entrusted to them to traitorous uses. But 
if such was the limit of the project, in execution it passed 
beyond those bounds. Where the massacre took place, 
neither sex nor age was spared. Among the victims was a 
distinguished Northman named Palig. This man had 
repaid the bounty of Ethelred by fighting under the stand- 
ard of his enemies. Palig and his children were all doomed 
to die. Gunhilda, his wife, was a sister of Sweyn, the great 
Danish chieftain ; and in submitting with heroic dignity to 
her fate, after witnessing the death of her husband and her 
son, she is said to have predicted that all England would 
have ere long to meet a weighty reckoning for the deeds of 
that day. f 
sweyn'sin- Tlie next year Sweyn made his appearance in England 
at the head of a powerful army. Exeter, through the 
treachery of its commander, passed into his hands. During 

* Ulfkytel, the ruler of East Anglia, was the only Dane who, in the language 
of Malmesbury, ' resisted the invaders with any degree of spirit,' in the reign of 
Ethelred.— De Reg. lib. ii. c. 10. 

f Chron. Sax. Florence Wigorn. ad an. 1002. Malms, de Reg. lib. ii. c. 10. 



vasion. 



RISE OF THE DANISH MONARCHY. 153 

four years, the country, with the exception of some fortified b ° h °k n. 

places, was wholly at his mercy. Everywhere he came as 

an avenger — not only to plunder, but to consume by fire, 
and to cut down with the sword. At the end of the fourth 
year he consented to leave the island on condition of receiv- 
ing thirty-six thousand pounds of silver ; and that sum was 
paid to him. 

But the army under Sweyn had no sooner departed, than under'aW 
another, no less ferocious, appeared under Thurchil. This c ' ' 
chief affected to seek vengeance for the death of a brother, 
as Sweyn had sought it for the death of a sister. Another 
three years of unchecked exposure to Danish spoliation and 
cruelty now awaited the unhappy country. Elphege, the 
good archbishop of Canterbury, was doomed to see the peo- 
ple, the town, and the cathedral of Canterbury destroyed by 
these demons, and then to perish himself by their hands,' 
from the blows inflicted on him while in their cups. Could 
he have descended to save his life by paying the price which 
had been fixed upon it, he might have been spared. Hav- 
ing ravaged half the kingdom, Thurchil consented to enter 
the service of Ethelred for the sum of forty-eight thousand 
pounds. This proposal was accepted, and the greater part 
of his followers showed a disposition to settle in the 
country. 

Swevn had secretly consented to this invasion bv Thur- Second in- 

</ «/ J vasion by 

chil. But it did not accord with his plans that the result sweyn. 
should be of this nature. He had sworn on the death of his 
sister to possess himself of the sovereignty of England. He 
now collected a force which promised to be equal to such an 
enterprise. The splendour as well as the greatness of this 
armament was a favourite theme with the poets of the age. 
The northern provinces submitted without resistance, and 
the Danish inhabitants rendered aid to their countrymen. 
Marching northward, where the conqueror expected oppo- 
sition, his instructions were that the towns should be given 
to the flames, that the churches should be deprived of 
everything valuable, and that every male should be put to 
the sword. And these mandates were fully acted upon. 
Ethelred and Thurchil shut themselves up within the walls 



154: 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 5. 



Sweyn pro- 
claims him- 
self kiiifr. 



Invasion by 
Canute. 



Edmund's 
brave re- 
sistance of 
the Danes 
under 
Canute. 



of London, which held out against every stratagem of the 
besiegers. But in all other directions the approach of the 
Northmen scared away resistance. 

Sweyn retired to Bath. He there proclaimed himself 
king of England, and summoned the chief men of Wessex 
to meet him in that place, and to swear allegiance to him. 
Even the capital began to waver in its fidelity ; so that 
Ethelred sent his family to Normandy, and sought conceal- 
ment himself in the isle of Wight. But in less than a 
month from the time when the prospects of the English mon- 
arch had become thus gloomy, Sweyn died. Sweyn named 
his son Canute as his successor. The English rallied around 
Ethelred, and Canute was obliged to make a precipitate re- 
treat from the country. 

In the following year Canute returned, with a fleet and 
army described in glowing terms by ancient writers. Thur- 
chil had sought his pardon, and had obtained it. But 
Ethelred the ' Unready ' had done nothing to prepare him- 
self for this exigency. The vengeance he took on the natu- 
ralized Northmen, both by sword and by assassination, 
only added to the clangers of his position. Edmund, wearied 
apparently by this incompetency, assumed independence of 
his father ; but failed to collect a force sufficient to warrant 
his attempting to measure his strength with the enemy. The 
army of Edmund quartered itself in the northern counties, 
while that under Canute roamed unimpeded through the 
south. Affairs had come to this pass when Ethelred breathed 
his last in London. Edmund, who was with him in his 
sickness, was proclaimed king by the citizens.* 

Had Edmund become king of England some forty years 
earlier, in the place of his father, it is probable that in him 
the peaceful and prosperous reign of Edgar would have been 
perpetuated. The resources of the country at that time would 
have sufficed, under proper management, to have kept the 
Northmen at bay ; and free action being thus secured to the 
springs of internal prosperity, England might have known 
nothing of a Danish dynasty, or of a Norman conquest. 

* Chron. Sax. Flor. Wigorn. Malms, de Reg. ii. c. 10. Hunting, v. 205, 
206. Westmin. 201, 202. 



EISE OF THE DANISH MONAECHY. 155 

So general and so deep was the distrust of Ethelred during book ir. 
the latter years of his reign, that the national spirit appear- — — ' 
ed to have become extinct. The Northmen had learned to 
despise the natives, even when ten to one. But with the 
accession of Edmund the most inert became active, and a 
people who seemed to have lost all heart are seen rising 
into heroism. 

London alone had been strong enough to resist the invad- 
er. Canute now invested it with an army of twenty-seven 
thousand men. But Edmund passed through the enemies' 
ships in a boat by night. His call to the men of Wessex 
brought great numbers to his standard. Canute, leaving a 
division of his forces to watch the metropolis, marched at 
the head of a powerful army to meet the king. The two 
competitors faced each other at a place called Scearston. Battle of 
The battle was most obstinately sustained on both sides. 
It lasted the whole day. The next morning it was renewed. 
In this second conflict Edmund caught sight of Canute. 
Rushing towards him, his battle-axe fell on the shield of 
the Dane with such force as to divide it asunder, and to 
wound his horse in the shoulder. Canute owed his life to 
the number of his followers who chanced to be on the spot. 
In this pending state of the struggle, Edric, a false Saxon, 
struck off the head of a slain warrior, and raising it aloft, 
cried to the English, ' See the head of Edmund your king.' 
For a moment the dismay intended to be produced by this 
stratagem became visible. But Edmund darted to an emi- 
nence, removed his helmet, and raising his voice to reassure 
his men, restored their confidence. The darkness of the 
second night came, and the combatants were still upon the 
field. But on the morning of the third day it was manifest 
that the greater loss had been on the side of the Danes ; 
and Canute, to recruit his forces, began to retrace his steps 
towards London. 

Edmund followed without delay. At Brentford a second 
engagement took place, in which the advantage was with 
the Danes ; but in the third engagement, near Oxford, the 
Northmen were signally defeated. Canute now raised the 
siege of London, and passed from the Isle of Sheppey into 



156 



SAXOXS AXD DAXES. 



East Anglia, ravaging the country in his way northward. 
Edmund was again upon his path. At Ashdown (Assing- 
don) another engagement took place. The Danes knew 
their condition to be perilous. To raise their courage, 
Thurchil assured them that the omen from the flight of the 
raven had been eminently propitious. The traitor Edric, 
strange to say, was again in command, and was the first to 
fly.* Edmund, and the faithful among his followers, fought 
the whole day. The moon had risen for some hours before 
the deadly strife reached its close. On the morrow Edmund 
found that his losses, especially among the men of rank, on 
whom he had most reason to dej)end, had been alarmingly 
great. He retreated into Gloucestershire ; Canute followed, 
and another desperate encounter would have taken place, 
had net the partisans of the two leaders prevailed on them 
to agree to a compromise. 

In the adjustment made, the part of England south of 
the Thames was assigned to Edmund, that to the north fell 
to Canute. Only a few weeks later, Edmund perished by 
the hand of an assassin. Canute profited by this event, 
but it does not appear that he was privy to it. Why Ed- 
mund was called the ' Ironside ' is uncertain. The name 
was manifestly a fitting one, for his short experience of sov*- 
ereignty, which required him to be prompt in putting on 
his armour, never allowed him to put it ofF.f 

Canute now became king of England, and two men of 
his race, Harald and Ilardicanute, succeeded him in that 
dignity. The sovereignty then returned to the Saxon line 
in the person of Edward the Confessor ; and in its next 
change it passed to the Gorman line, through Harold. 
From the battle of Hastings we date a new epoch in Eng- 
lish history. 

"We have thus taken our retrospect of the Revolutions 
effected by the Sword in Anglo-Saxon Britain. Its first 
great achievement we find in the ' Migration,' which trans- 
ferred the lands of England from the Celt to the Saxon. 

* This Edrie appears to have been a singularly gifted villain, but he at length 
met with his reward from the hand of Canute. Flor. Wigorn. ad an. 1007-1017. 

f Chron. Sax. Flor. Wigorn. Malms, dc Reg. lib. ii. c. 10. Lappenberg, 
ii. 187-193. 



RISE OF THE DANISH MONARCHY. 157 

The second we see in those wars of the Heptarchy which B00K IL 

t • . . Chap. 5. 

issued m the concentration ot the sovereignty m the house 

of Cerdic. The third is before us in the effect of the Danish 
invasions, which favoured the centralization of the sove- 
reignty by falling with much more disastrous effect on North- 
umbria and Mercia than on Wessex, and by pointing to 
the advantage of a common centre in that quarter. At the 
same time, we see in these invasions a grand impediment to 
the social progress that might otherwise have been realized. 

During the first two centuries after the landing of the 
Saxons, the wars of the Heptarchy are the great bar in the 
way of social improvement. During the two centuries 
which follow, the Danes become the great hindrance. 
These facts cover nearly the whole space between the landing 
of Hengist and the invasion by the Duke of Normandy. 
The intervals of comparative quiet and security are few, 
and of short duration. The characteristic features of the pe- 
riod are unsettledness, danger, and suffering. 

If we except the affair of the Pretender in 1745, it is Ancient 

. . 7 and modern 

now two centuries since England has seen war. How sier- England. 
nincant the contrast between the face of this same country 
during these two centuries, and during the two which pre- 
ceded the reign of Egbert, or of the two which followed ! 
The land which was as a perpetual battle-field for ages, has 
ceased through two hundred years to see a soldier, except on 
parade. In this difference we see the effect, not only of a 
better consolidated monarchy, but of the better constitu- 
tional precautions by which the interests of society are 
guarded against the accidents of character in the person of 
the sovereign. The Witan of the Anglo-Saxon seemed to 
exercise a weighty function on the demise of a king, and on 
some other occasions. But the king being once invested 
with the supreme power, the character of the man deter- 
mined the character of the times. The great want was, not 
only that there should be a central and supreme authority, 
but that the authority so recognised should have been better 
denned, better aided, regulated, and guarded, and, as the 
consequence, better obeyed. But the due subordination 
of the less to the greater, of the factious to the patriotic, be- 



158 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. longs only to that advanced stage in the political education 

of a people which comes from experience — the experience 

of generations and centuries. Of course, underneath the 
changes before us on the surface of Anglo-Saxon history, 
there were the differences of race, of religion, and of usage, 
ever seethine:, and contributing their restless influences to 
one phase of change after another. How fax these differ- 
ences were softened by Christianity, and by other causes, 
so as to prepare the way for the England of the future, we 
have still to inquire. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EFFECT OF THE SAXON AND DANISH CONQUESTS ON THE 
DISTRIBUTIONS OF EACE. 

npHE strifes which, come so constantly to the surface of cuap. 6.' 
■*• Anglo-Saxon history had their roots far beneath. They Kesuits 
were not effects without causes. The effects seem to indi- differences 
cate that the causes were pervading and of much force, and 
such was the fact. The great cause we no doubt find in the 
differences of race, and in the other differences consequent 
on that difference. The two great lines of distinction in this 
respect were those which separated — first between the Saxon 
and the Briton, and then between the Saxons, the Britons 
and the Danes. But there were lesser lines of separation 
beneath these, which tended in their measure to impart to 
the story of Anglo-Saxon Britain the complexion under 
which it is known to us. 

On the differences of this nature which obtained among Diversities 
the Teutons who were the founders of the English Hep tar- among tho 

An»lo- 

chy, we shall allow the venerable Bede to speak. ' From Saxons. 
the Jutes,' he writes, ' sprang the men of Kent, and the 
"Wihtware, the tribe which now dwelleth in the Isle of 
"Wight, and the other tribe in the country of the East Sax- 
on opposite to the Isle of "Wight, whom men still call by 
the name of the hundred of the Jutes. From the Saxons, 
that is to say, from the land now called the country of the 
Old Saxons, descended the East Saxons, the South Saxons, 
and the "West Saxons. From the Angles, that is to say, 
from the country called Anglia (Anglen), and which from 
that time till now is said to have remained waste, between 
the provinces of the Jutes and the Old Saxons, descended 



160 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. the East Angles, the Mercians, the race of the Xorthumbri- 

< HAP. 6. O 7 

ans, and all the rest of the nations of England.' * 

those e di C vcr- f I* w ^ De seen tna t m tn * s description precedence in re- 
sities. gard to extent of territory, and, in consequence, with regard 

to numbers, is assigned to the Angles, who took possession 
of the north and north-west portion of the island. The 
next position is assigned to the Saxons, who gave the name 
of ' Saxon ' to their several territories in the south and south- 
east. To the Jutes falls the smallest space, and the smallest 
influence. These tribes possessed much in common, but 
they were distinguished from each other in many respects 
— in dialect, in customs, in personal qualities. Many traces 
of these diversities are still perceptible in the several terri- 
tories which they respectively occupied. It is probable 
that along with these 'three tribes' there were considerable 
admixtures of Frisians, Franks, and even Longobards,f 
though not to such extenl a- to be readily traced by us at 
this distance of time. The differences between these settlers 
— in Bpeech, in physiognomy, in complexion, in the colour 
of the eyes and hair, and in dress and manners, were prob- 
ably much stronger than Ave are dispOBed to imagine. 

Many of the physical diversities .-till observable among as, 
though much softened by time, have descended from this 
source. Hence, too, many varieties in customs, such as the 
difference between the Wapentake of Yorkshire, and the 
Hundred of Sussex.:]: 

No thoughtful man will suppose that these varieties 
could exist without awakening more or less of a spirit of 
clannish pride and rivalry; and we need not attempt to 
show what the effect of Mich passions has generally been 
among such communities. The history of the Highlands of 
Scotland, down to comparatively recent times, furnishes 
ample illustration on this point. Hence, in great part, the 

■ Eist. lib. i. c. 16. 

■f- rroeopius, de Bcllo Gothico, iv. 20, 93 ct seq. Palgrave, i. c. 2. 

\ In the history of Anglo-Saxon legislation frequent reference is made, down 
to the time of Edward the Confessor, to the differences between Wessex-law, 
Mercian-law, and Danish-law. Each people had their peculiar usages, which were 

gnised and respected on such occasions. See Laws of Alfred and Gothrun, 
and Laws of Edward the Confessor, Edgar's laws recognise distinctions of this 
nature between Kcntishmcn, and South Angles, and North Angles. 



NEW DISTKIBUTIONS OF KACE. 161 

absence of all combination between the different states of book "• 

Chap. 6. 

the Heptarchy, whether in opposing the incursions of the 

Britons along the western side of their territory, or of the 
Scots along the northern side. As the wars carried on with 
those foes subsided, internal feuds, from other causes, came 
into more vigorous action, and served to impose a long suc- 
cession of checks on all tendencies towards unity and im- 
provement. 

Much has been written concerning the supposed effect 1^ ^. the 
of the Saxon invasion on the Britons. The fact that the ^Cation 
Britons kept together along nearly the whole of the western Britons. 
side of the island, from Cumberland to Cornwall, and the 
small traces of the British tongue along the parallel territory 
on the eastern side of that line, would seem to suggest that 
the effect of this memorable collision was, that the natives 
relinquished the one half of their land entirely to the in- 
vader, but retained firm hold on the other half. It is not 
probable, however, that the population of any of the Saxon 
states was without a considerable admixture of British 
blood. The keels of the Saxon freebooters can hardly be 
supposed to have brought settlers in sufficient numbers, and 
of both sexes, to warrant such an opinion. Greatly more 
was done ere long upon the soil than can be explained on 
such a supposition. That a large admixture of this kind 
took place along the border lands which separated between 
the two races is unquestionable. In the south and east, 
where the deteriorating effects of the Roman civilization 
were the most deeply rooted, the Saxons found the portion 
of the natives most habituated to submission. The most 
energetic, no doubt, sought a new home westward or north- 
ward, rather than submit to the new masters : but the more 
passive would often cling to the soil on any tolerable con- 
ditions. 

Then, concerning language, the difference between the 
two races in this respect is supposed by some to have been 
much exaggerated. According to Coesar, Britain was largely 
peopled from Belgic Gaul, and not less than one-third of 
the vocabulary of the Cymric tongue is said to consist of 

Vol. L— 11 



162 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B ° 0K ?■ words derived from roots common to it and to the Bel- 

Chap. 6. 

glC. •• 

These affinities between the Cymric and the Saxon, if 
existing to anything like this extent, are enough to suggest 
that it may not be easy to say how far the one has really 
superseded the other. That in England, the Welsh has 
been to a very large extent superseded by the Saxon is cer- 
tain ; and we conclude, in eonsccrucnce, that the Britons 
who dwelt amidst the conquering Saxons must have borne 
a small proportion in influence or numbers to the race 
which had subdued them. But that the Saxons were alive 
to the uses that might be made of the vanquished natives 
is not only in the highest degree probable from the facts of 
the ease, but manifest from the records of history. It 
should be remembered, that considerable spaces intervened 
between the establishment of one Saxon state and another, 
so that the natives would know, as resistance became hope- 
less, what was to be expected from submission. 

So late as the year 900, the Britons of the West, that is, 
of the counties of Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Devon, and 
Cornwall, joined their forces with the Dane- against Egbert. 
Their princes were thai finally prostrated, and the chief 
authority in those parts passed into the hands of the West- 
Saxon thanes. But the name of ' Weal-cynne,' by which 
those counties are designated in the will of Alfred, .-hows 
that the population remained for the most part British. 
Even so late as the time of Athelstan, Exeter, the capital 
of the Dumnonii from times preceding the conquest by the 
Romans, was governed by the joint authority of Britons 
and Saxons; but from the age of that monarch, the inde- 
pendent power of the Britons of the West was confined to 
Cornwall, where the old Celtic has been the vernacular lan- 
guage of a portion of the inhabitants almost to our own 
day. The names of the leading men in the above counties, 
as preserved in Domesday, are none of them British, and 
the English law had then become common to them all, at 
the same time it is certain that the English speech was still 
unknown to the main body of the people.'f 

* Palgrave, i. 27. 

f Palgrave, i. 410, 411. Proofs and Illustrations, 243, 244. In fact, the 



NEW DISTRIBUTIONS OF KACE. 163 

Along the east coast we discover few or no traces of the B J? 0K ?• 

° Chap. 6. 

British. The population in those regions is more purely 

Saxon than in any other part of Saxon Britain clown to the 
time of the Danish invasions. Of the footing retained by 
the Britons along the Welsh side of the Bristol Channel, 
through Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire into 
Cheshire, we need not speak. Northward from that point 
the old British element spreads more or less for a while 
from west to east. 

We say little on the vexed question concerning the The ^?." le3 

" x O in relation 

origin and history of the Picts and Scots. We have seen t^p? 1 ^" 
that the Angles were stubbornly resisted in their endeav- ^orth- 
ours to possess themselves of the ample territory between umbria - 
the Plumber and the Forth. The Humber formed the bor- 
der line of the southern division of the ancient kingdom of 
Northumbria, as the Forth was the boundary of the north- 
ern division. The population of that kingdom was made 
up of four nations — Angles, Britons, Picts, and Scots. The 
last three nations, in common with the first, were governed 
by their own chiefs or princes ; and when the chief of the 
Angles was strong, these chiefs paid him tribute ; when 
that prince happened to be weak, they asserted their inde- 
pendence. These peoples were often subdued by the 
Angles, but never more than partially displaced. In the 
northern half of Northumbria the Picts and Scots were the 
most numerous ; in the southern half, the Angles were the 

names of places in England are much more of an old British origin than is com- 
monly supposed, and warrant a strong conclusion as to the presence of the British 
with the Saxons to the latest period of Anglo-Saxon history. If there be any 
word that we are wont to account as certainly of Saxon origin it is the word for d, 
as a termination in the names of places — such as Bradford, Stafford. But it is 
singular that this word does not occur in the names of places in those countries 
from which our Saxons and Northmen came. Other names, which they gave with 
frequency to places in this island, occur as often in the countries on the shores 
of the Baltic. But it is not thus with the word ford. In the British tongue, how- 
ever, we have the word fordd or ford, denoting a road or passage ; and the fact 
would seem to be that the word was adopted from the Britons, but with a some- 
what restricted application to roads where they cross streams or rivers. We 
scarcely need say that the British influence must have been great which sufficed 
to ensure the continuance of local names at all upon this scale. — See Barnes's 
Notes on Britain and the Britons. 

Names ending in combe — a valley, and in way or wye — water, are evidently 
of British origin. Shakespeare is an Englishman, but the river's name with which 
his own is associated, Avon, is old British. ' The men of Arvon [Avon] with 
their ruddy lances.' — Ancient Laws of Wales, p. 50. 



164 



SAX0X3 AXD DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 6. 



Location of 
t he i > 1-1 - 
in England. 



most powerful on the eastern side of the hills of Cumberland 
and Yorkshire, the Britons on the western side. These com- 
parative numbers, moreover, and these relations to territory, 
appear to have remained much the same, as regarded the 
population, amidst all the revolutions of power among those 
who affected to govern them. The Britons of Cumbria, of 
Cambria, and of the "West, with their chain of military sta- 
tions, reaching from the rock of Dumbarton to Mount St. 
Michael, have left traces of their blood and language along 
the whole of that distance. The ancient Cumber survives in 
the modern Cumberland — which means the country of the 
Cymry, or, as it is sometimes written, the Cumry. From 
the Clyde to the Dee the Cumry were once the prevalent 
race. Even the power of Atlielstan was not sufficient to 
awe them into subjection. They fought against him at 
Brunanbnrgh — showing, in that instance, as the Britons 
generally did, a greater disposition to Bide with the Danes 
than with the Saxons. In the West, extending from Som- 
erset to Cornwall, the characteristics of the British were 

gradually effaced by the ascendency, first of the Saxons, and 

afterwards of the Normans. In Cumbria title same change 
must be attributed to infusions from the Angles and the 
Set-, but more especially to an invasion of the province by 
thc Scandinavians in the tenth century. From the moun- 
tain- of Wales the descendants of the ancient Cumry have 
seen their brethren in the west and north melt away in the 
great stream of mingling populations, while they have 
themselves retained their old Celtic speech, and their old 
features of ( leltic nationality. 

We have seen the extent to which the Danes became 
possessors of the English territory. In 8TG Halfdene, the 
Northman, divided Northumbria among his followers, who 
BOOn became cultivators of the soil which had so fallen to 
them. The treaty of Alfred with Guthorm placed East 
Anglia — including ^Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, the Isle of 
Ely, a portion of Bedfordshire, and parts adjacent — in the 
hands of that chief, to beholden by him and his descend- 
ants in subordination to Wessex. Mercia — the territory of 



the 



great 



Offa — became a prey to these invaders, who at 



NEW DISTKIBUTTONS OF KACE. 165 

length gave stability to their acquisitions in that quarter b ? h °k ii. 

by the power which they concentrated in the Five Danish 

burgs — viz. Lincoln, ^Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, and 
Stamford. Some make these burgs to be seven, including 
York and Chester. So some three-fourths of Anglo-Saxon 
Britain came to be, in a political sense, and for a time, 
Danish, the ruling power over that large surface of country 
having passed into the hands of that people. The Angles, 
the Britons, and the Scots in those territories were all nu- 
merous, much more numerous than the Danes ; but the 
Danes, who found settlements among them, had been suffi- 
ciently strong to subdue them. We have seen that there 
were many oscillations of power between these new con- 
querors and the conquered ; but that the Danes were con- 
querors to this extent, and possessed such sway, though 
only for a season, is a fact that must have had much in- 
fluen e on the future. The policy of Alfred, when he had 
saved "VVessex, was to cede to the Danes, upon conditions, 
the territories they had won, and to do all that might be 
done towards amalgamating the different races into one 
people. 

Through all these influences the Danish blood in Ens;- General 

° g ° distribution 

land be ame the most prevalent in East Anglia ; next, 
along the eastern coast between the Humber and the Forth ; 
and next, in the midland counties, forming the kingdom of 
Mercia. In the west, the admixture was between the Sax- 
ons and the British. In all the lands to the north and 
north-west, it consisted in a large displacement of the Brit- 
ish element by the Anglian and Danish. 

All these facts, it will be seen, related to the position of 
the Danes in Anglo-Saxon Britain before the accession of 
Canute. The formidable invasions which immediately pre- 
ceded that event, and the event itself, of course added much, 
both in the way of numbers and influence, to the Danish 
power in this country before the Conquest. 

During the latter half of the tenth century a powerful N ^ g | aa 
Norwegian migration appears to have set in, with little j^f^" 
noise, but with much steadiness and effect, on Cumberland westmore- 
and the parts adjoining. "We have reason to suppose that 



166 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B cS. "' ^" S m ig rat ion did not pass the Yorkshire hills from the 
east. Its approach appears to have been by means of the 
Irish sea, and the Isle of Man, from the west. But so con- 
siderable was this movement at the time mentioned, that the 
traces of the Celtic population in those parts in the times 
which follow, are few and faint, while the traces of the Scan- 
dinavian, in the names of places and other remains, are still 
found almost everywhere. The link which had connected 
the Celts of the hill country of Wales with those of the hill 
country of Scotland, was thus displaced ; and the blood of 
the Northmen, either Danes or Saxons, became the domi- 
nant blood along the whole of the lowlands between the 
Mersey and the Clyde. Karnes ending in thwaite,* Jyy, and 
thorp, \ are of very frequent occurrence over that district ; 
and all these are of Scandinavian origin. But then they 
mingle freely with names ending in ton, ham, and worth, 
which are of Saxon origin. So it is over a great part of 
England : and, though the Saxon and the Danish languages 
included much in common, the prevalence of such names 
from the one or the other of those languages in a district, 
may be taken as a pretty certain indication of the preva- 
lence of race in that locality before the Conquest.:}: 

The Northmen who made their descent from the Solway 
on the shores of Cumberland, were probably of the same 
stock with those who, about the same time, had secured a 
footing in Pembrokeshire. The names ~Mi\ford and Haver- 
ford, can hardly have been of Saxon origin. The localities 

* ' Thwaite: Norwegian thveit, Danish tved. This is one of the most charac- 
teristic terms of our district, occurring the most frequently in Cumberland, which 
has about a hundred names in which it appears; being also very common in 
Westmoreland, becoming scarce as we advance into Yorkshire, and ceasing alto- 
gether when we arrive at the more purely Danish district of Lincoln.' — The 
Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland, by Robert Ferguson, 1856. The 
term thwaite was used to denote a ' clearing,' and occurs most frequently where 
there was much wood to be cleared. In Norway itself it occurs in some places 
more than others ; in many instances in our Lake districts, the term and its prefix 
have been transplanted from the mother country, as the names of places in Eng- 
land reappear in the United States. 

•j- By is a termination denoting a dwelling-place, or home, and is more Danish 
than Norwegian ; the same may be said of thorp, which denotes a village. 

\ The Cumberland Britons, pressed by the Saxons and Northmen, seem to 
have retired by degrees into Wales, leaving little trace of themselves behind, 
except in some Celtic names of places which have survived them. There is noth- 
ing Celtic among the present inhabitants of the district. 



NEW DISTRIBUTIONS OF KACE. 167 

do not answer to the Saxon use of tlie term ford — but these book ii. 

" Chap. 6. 

places are truly described by the Norse word fiord, which 

denotes an arm of the sea. The word holm, too, applied to 
the Yl&t-holm and the Steep-holm, in the Bristol Channel, is 
not the Saxon nor the British, but the Norwegian name for 
island* 

It is to be remembered, then, that Saxons and Northmen 
were related as branches to one parent stem : and, what is 
more, that the same may be said of the Normans, who were 
destined to become so blended on our soil with both. But 
the Northman had come as an intruder on the ground of 
the Saxon ; and this fact was fatal to the unity that might 
have enabled them to resist the next invader, to whom they 
were both to become subject. It is clear that the strength 
of the Danish element in Anglo-Saxon Britain was great — 
much greater than is commonly apprehended ; and disas- 
trous in many respects as was the collision between the two 
races on our soil, it is probable that the two together fur- 
nished a better stamina for the England of a later age, than 
would have been furnished by the Saxon alone. It is not 
easy to say how much of our passion for the sea, and of our 
power there, have come from the blood of this later genera- 
tion of sea-kings who found their home among us. It is cer- 
tain that our great sea-captains, and our men of genius in 
all departments, have their full share of Danish names 
among them. But if the Danish race were to contribute 
towards our greatness in the end, it is not less certain that 
they proved a sad impediment to our progress in the be- 
ginning. 

It should, however, be distinctly remembered, that the 
language of England, which was not to become Norman, 
never became Danish. It is thus manifest that the 
race which continued to be the most diffused, and the most 
rooted in the land through all changes was the Anglian or 
Saxon. At the Conquest, the language spoken in the coun- 
try contained words from the Latin, more from the Danish, 
and more than is commonly supposed from the Celtic ; 
but its forms and its substance were those which had been 

* The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland, pp. 9, 10. 



168 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book il introduced by tlie three great branches of the migration, 

the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles, and especially by 

the latter, the destined root of England and of its English- 
men. 

* An Account of the Banes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and 
Ireland, by E. J. H. Worsaae. London, 1852. 'On the Races of Lancashire, 
as indicated by the Social Names and the Dialect of the County,' see Proceedings 
of the Philological Society, 1855. 'English Ethnography,' by Dr. Donaldson, 
Cambridge Essays, 1856. ' We entirely miss in English,' says Dr. Donaldson, 
' any traces of the distinctive peculiarities of the Danish language. We do not 
find the article postfixed, there are great differences in the numerals, the substan- 
tive verb follows a different form in the plural, and the peculiar negative particle, 
ikke, is never used in this island. From this last circumstance alone we feel con- 
vinced that the Danes exerted only a transitory and limited influence on the lan- 
guage and national characteristics of our ancestors.' — Ibid. 



CHAPTER VII. 

REVOLUTION IN" RELIGION IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. 

RELIGION in some form is a want of humanity. All book ii. 
communities accordingly, even the lowest, have their Eel ]^~ a 
religions. The choice in history is always found to lie, not "herace 7 ° f 
between any particular religion and no religion, but be- 
tween one religion and another. Nor is it just to suppose 
that a religion which may appear to us to be very unreas- 
onable, can never have been a religion deeply felt, or sin- 
cerely believed. As a rule, the men who sustain false relig- 
ions, are as firm believers in the religion they profess, as 
are the nations who sustain what we hold to be a more true 
and enlightened faith. 

Everywhere, in consequence, religion is one of the most its potency 
potent influences m making the man and the nation such as 
we find them. Nowhere is this more true than in the case 
of such rude communities as come before us in the history 
of the Saxons and the Danes. Strong are the relations 
between ignorance and credulity. Many causes may have 
contributed to make the religion of a people such as it is ; 
but religion once imbibed, becomes itself a cause of wide 
and powerful influence. In this island the Saxon and the Heathen 

x , . ■ , life of the 

Dane soon learnt to relinquish their heathenism. But the saxonand 

r^i ••• i'ii t ' ie Dane. 

Christianity which they embraced was much too narrow and 
intolerant to allow of their giving us any satisfactory account 
of their old religion when once they had embraced the new. 
Frequent as is the mention made by the Christian Saxons 
of the pagans of their own time, and of the preceding time, 
there is a remarkable absence in their writings of any 



170 



SAXOXS AXD DANES. 



BOOK II. 

Chap. 7. 



Their early 
faith dete- 
riorated. 



Identity of 
religious 
faith be- 
tween the 
Saxon and 
the Dane. 



attempt to describe the nature of the heathenism once so 
familiar to themselves. So that our direct information on 
this subject, especially as regards the Anglo-Saxons, is much 
more fragmentary and obscure than might have been ex- 
pected. * 

It is certain, however, that the objects of worship among 
the Anglo-Saxons were the same substantially with those 
recognised by the wide-spread German race on the Con- 
tinent. The mythology of the Teutonic nations as known 
to Cffisar and Tacitus, was only partially developed, as com- 
pared with the shape which that worship had assumed some 
three or four centuries later, when the Saxons invaded Brit- 
ain. The worship which the first Germanic settlers brought 
into the north of Europe is supposed to have recognised one 
Supreme Being, in a manner unknown among their de- 
scendants in later ages, f This purer faith the first emi- 
grants bore with them from the East, as they made their 
way along the track of territory between the Caspian and 
the Euxine. 

By degrees this belief gave place to a more complicated 
system of nature worship, and to hero and demon worship. 
In history, monotheism always declines where the authority 
of revelation fails. If that doctrine is to be secure as the 
faith of a nation, it must rest on some more intelligible 
ground than reason can present to the popular understand- 
ing. Creature worship, in some form or other, is natural to 
man. The immediate worship of an Infinite Creator is too 
hard for him. The chasm between the ordinary capacities 
of men and such an object of worship, is too great to be 
passed by any process of metaphysical thought possible to 
such capacities. 

The history of all false religions, and the history of the 
larger portion of Christendom itself, furnishes evidence but 
too conclusive on this point. But whatever may have pre* 

* In the canons of the Anglo-Saxon Church, the remains of the old paganism 
among the people are never named but to be condemned ; and the topic often 
occurs. — See Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, 18, 23, 24, 71-74, 86, 
162, 396, 397, 419. Persistence in heathen worship after the profession of 
Christianity became general was made capital. — Ibid. 

\ Mallet's Northern Antiquities, c. iv. v. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 171 

ceded, it is certain that the worship of the Saxons, Jutes, ^^ T 7 L 
and Angles, in the fifth and sixth centuries, had become ' 

very much what the Danish worship is known to he in the 
ninth and tenth centuries. The gods worshipped by the 
Danes when they became invaders of Britain, were the gods 
after whom the Anglo-Saxons had named the days of the 
week three centuries earlier. During those centuries the 
Scalds of the Northmen may have expanded and embellish- 
ed the mythic fictions of their race, but the tree, though it 
had grown, was still the same tree. In the religious life of 
the Dane, accordingly, as indicated in the Edda, we have 
beyond doubt the main elements of the religious life of the 
Saxon, from whose earlier traditions the Edda itself was in 
great part derived. 

Our object in this place does not require that we should 
attempt to distinguish between the true and the false in the 
mythology of the northern nations. Our business just now 
is not with what the Saxon or the Dane should have believ- 
ed, but with what they did believe. Their divinities may 
have had some place in history, but they owe the character 
under which they are known to us to the forms of thought, 
and to the passions dominant among their worshippers. 
Such worshippers fashion their gods, and are fashioned by 
them. To know their deities, in consequence, is to know 
themselves. 

With the Dane, and with the Saxon before him, Odin o<iin wor- 

... . ship. 

or Woden, was the great divinity. Amidst the cold and 
barren regions of the north, and amidst the storm and dan- 
ger of his Baltic winters, the Saxon had often heard from 
poet and from priest of the wonder-working life of Woden. 
How he learnt many centuries since, to hate the ambition 
of the B.omans, and to despise the nations that submitted to 
it ; how he left his great city of Asgard in the far East, and 
passing the great seas of that eastern land, travelled west- 
ward ; how the warlike youth of all nations flocked to his 
standard ; how he passed along the territory of the Saxons, 
and Angles, and Jutes, in his way to conquests which cover- 
ed all the regions northward ; how he became the father of 
many kings, dividing among them many lands ; how, while 



172 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B J? 0K l l - ho could rush as a devouring flame over the battle-field, he 

Chap. 7. ° ' 

could use most- persuasive speech in prose and verse, knew 

many secret arts which gave him power over the seen and 
the unseen, and power to establish many wise laws ; how 
finding his end approaching, and scorning to die of a wast- 
ing sickness, he gathered his brave men about him, inflicted 
a succession of wounds upon his person, and spoke in those 
last moments of returning whence he came, to the home of 
the gods ; and how, having been worshipped while he lived, 
he became known when he had departed, as no other than 
the greatest of the gods, the father of creation, of gods and 
of men. The Mars, the Mercury, and the Apollo of the 
classical mythology appear to meet in the "Woden of the 
Saxon and the Northman, but the warlike element is the 
prominent one. He was ' The terrible god, the father of 
slaughter, the giver of victory, the reviver of the faint in 
battle — naming those who should be slain.' "Warriors go 
forth vowing to send to him so many ghosts from the field. 
These were his right, he receives them in the hall of Val- 
halla — the place where all who die with weapons in their 
hands receive their reward. There the brave sit down with 
him at his feast. But here they bow in all things to the 
destiny of his will. They hear him often amidst the din of 
anus — see him often where the death-strife thickens. Even 
this, is not enough. Of Odin the Ed 'da says: 'He liveth 
and governeth during the ages ; he directeth everything 
which is high, and everything which is low ; whatever is 
great, and whatever is small ; he hath made the heavens, 
the air, and man, who is to live for ever — and before the 
heavens and the earth this god existed.' 

Not only Ilengist and llorsa, but all the founders of the 
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, without exception, claimed to be, 
in some way or other, descendants of Woden. Over the 
north, and in this country, the name of Woden was given 
to the fourth day of the week ; and the names of many 
places in England at this day, arc names derived from the 
worship there paid to this deity by our Saxon ancestors.* 

* Mallet, North Antiq. c. iii. v. Kemble's Saxons in England, i. 343, 344. 



EE VOLUTION EST RELIGION. 173 

Next to "Woden as an object of veneration, stood Thor, B ° 0K * L 

J ' ' Chap. T. 

the most valiant of his sons. Thor gave his name to the — — 
fifth day of the week among the Anglo-Saxons. In him the deities - 
Saxon saw the ' Thunderer.' The defender of the gods. 
The strong arm that could subdue giants and monsters. 
The girdle he wore ensured him a perpetual strength. The 
mallet he wielded with his mailed hand shattered resistance 
to pieces. In all this the initiated may have seen a mythic 
representation of an elemental deity, powerful over the forces 
of nature, which must be subdued and regulated to be sub- 
servient to man. But the rude Saxon saw nothing of these 
hidden meanings. Thor was to him what Woden was — a 
great warrior. 

Though the powers of all the gods seemed to meet in 
Odin, the Mars of the northern mythology was the god af- 
ter whom the ' Tuesday ' of the Anglo-Saxon week was 
named. "Worship was no doubt rendered to Tcio or Tyr 
on that day, but we know nothing concerning his special 
influence on his worshippers. The same may be said of 
Frea, from whom comes our name of ' Friday.' Frea 
appears to have been the god of boundaries and of in- 
crease. Of the god Ssetere, from whom our ' Saturday ' is 
named, we know even less, as connected with Anglo-Sax- 
on history, than of the preceding. 

But the myths of the north assign a conspicuous place |^ r ot 
to Balder, another son of Odin. They described him as the 
god of light and grace, of such manly beauty and excel- 
lence that light seemed to beam from him upon all be- 
holders. But a prophecy went forth that Balder would 
perish. The gods were afflicted by the tidings. Frigga, 
the wife of Odin, took an oath from all created nature, bind- 
ing every individual thing not to harm the person so men- 
aced, and so deeply beloved. It was found that no weapon 
could touch the life so guarded. But a sprig of mistletoe, 
too young at the time to have been included in the oath im- 
posed by Frigga, had been excepted. Loki — the Satan of 
this dream — placed a branch of the fatal mistletoe in a hos- 
tile hand, and Balder was killed. Odin himself descended to 
the abodes of the dead, hoping to prevail on the goddess 



m 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 7. 



Loki anil 
tli.' evil 
Deltii •. 



The Fates. 



Hel, the guardian of the departed, to give back her prey. 
It was promised that Balder should return on condition that 
all created nature should weep for him. All wept, save 
one old crone, whom Loki had possessed. When called up- 
on to join the weeping, she answered : ' What have the 
gods done for me that I should weep for Balder? Let Hel 
keep her dead.' So Balder could not he made to live again ; 
and so his faithful Xanna, refusing to survive her beautiful 
lord, perished on his funeral pile. Weeping virgins spread 
the pall over the loved one in the cold dark home of the in- 
visible. But the belief, nevertheless, went abroad, that a 
son of Balder had taken ample vengeance on the wiles of 
Loki ; and that a time would come, ' after the twilight of 
the gods,' when Balder would rise from the dead, and when 
his rising would be a signal for the ending of all sin, and 
sorrow, and death.'" 

It may, we think, be reasonably supposed, that the mate- 
rials of such a story did something towards preparing the 
people who could devise it, or believe in it, for their adop- 
tion of that better creed to which it has some strong and 
beautiful points of resemblance. 

The Loki of the Northman, in common with the Evil 
One of the Scriptures, had his place once where the good 
dwell. For the punishment of his wiles he is now put un- 
der restraint. What Loki was to the Danes, a being named 
Grendal had been to the Saxons. Thus we see that the 
doctrine of an Evil Spirit had its precursor among the old 
heathenisms of the north ; and we regret to say that this 
devil-doctrine became only more sensuous, and more coarse- 
ly superstitious, when assumed along with the profession of 
Christianity. Nothing could be more offensive than the 
use to which it was applied by the priesthood of those 
times. Our familiar expression, 'Old Nick,' comes from 
Xicor, the name given to a species of elve, or water-devil, 
found planning his mischief along the shores of lakes, 
rivers, and seas. 

The northern nations, moreover, had their Fates, who 
wove the web of destiny, and to whom both gods and men 



* Mallet, North Ant. c. v. Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, i. 367-369. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 175 

were subject. The three Norns — embracing the Past, the B ° 0K ?• 

° ~ ' Cnxp. 7. 

Present, and the Future — were what the three Fates of the 

Greek mythology had long been. The Saxon word weird 
was used to denote fate or destiny ; and we have all heard 
of the ' weird sisters.' Confidence in women supposed to 
be in possession of such knowledge of the things that shall 
be, was a conspicuous element in the northern heathenism. 
But in the warrior creed, the fate of battles, and of those 
who should be there found among the living or the dead, 
was with Odin. So that the Fates, if in some things su- 
preme, were in others subordinate ; and the weird sister 
who might see the future, had no power to produce change 
there.* 

In honour of these divinities the Ansrlo-Saxons reared worship of 

, . c) Saxon 

edifices, which are called temples, set up idols in such heathen- 
places, presented oxen in sacrifice before them, and connect- 
ed feasting and drinking with their acts of homage to them. 
Such was the worship practised in Kent at the time of its 
conversion, f It is certain, also, that such was the worship 
which obtained in the other states of the Heptarchy 4 Bede, 
in his account of JSTorthumbria, makes mention of a chief 
priest connected with the heathen worship in that kingdom. 
So that there were not only priests, but priests with some 
gradation of authority among them.§ But the authority 
which the Saxon ceded to the priest was small, compared 
with that which the Celt had ceded to the Druid ; and, in 
fact, but few of their priests would seem to have accom- 
panied them in their migration. It is from this cause, in 
part, that our information concerning the heathen worship 
of the Saxons after their settlement in this country is so lim- 
ited. We have no reason to suppose that their sacrifices 
in Britain ever included human victims ; but in their own 
land, the immolation of captives in honour of their gods 
was by no means uncommon.! 

This ceasing of human sacrifices, and this raising of build- 
ings for worship, on the part of the Saxon in Britain, may 

* Edda, part I. Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, i. c. 12. Olaus, Hist. iii. c. 9. 

f Bede, Eccles. Hist. i. 30. 

% Ibid. ii. 5, 9, 15 ; iii. 8, 30; iv. 22, 27. 

§ Ibid. ii. 13. || Sidonius, Opera, Ep. viii. 6. 



176 SAXONS AND DANES. 

^h^p 7 L su ffi ce to indicate tliat the change of country had conduced 
speedily and considerably to a change of manners. In the 
countries which these people had left, human sacrifices con- 
tinued to be offered so late as the ninth century ; and long 
after the times of Ilengist and Ilorsa their only places for 
worship continued to be of that rude Druidical description 
the remains of which are still found in many parts of Den- 
mark, Sweden, and Norway. But the time came in which 
all these countries began to rival each other in the splen- 
dour of the structures reared in honour of their deities. 

The great temple at Upsal in Sweden, appears to have 
been especially dedicated to Odin, Thor, and Frea. Its pe- 
riodical festivals were accompanied by different degrees of 
conviviality and licence, in which human sacrifices were 
rarely wanting, varied in their number and value by the 
supposed exigency. In some cases even royal blood was 
selected, that the imagined anger of the gods might be ap- 
peased. In Scandinavia, the authority of the priest was 
much greater than it would appear to have been among the 
Anglo-Saxons. It was his word often which determined 
where the needed victims should be found. It was his hand 
that inflicted the wound, and his voice which said ' I send 
thee to Odin,' declaring the object of the sacrifice to be, 
that the gods might be propitiated, that there might be a 
fruitful season, or a successful war. It was to his mandate 
that the proudest could bow without any sense of degrada- 
tion, his command being the utterance, not of the man, but 
of the god he represented. In this manner, as we have be- 
fore observed, the will resisted nowhere else, has often felt 
that there was at least one quarter from which restraint 
might come. Of course the Northmen were great believers 
in omens, and the priests were the interpreters of omens. 
AVe should add, that they were highly chivalrous in their 
conduct towards women. But even their love only tended 
to deepen their hate, and to give a stronger intensity to 
their passion to annihilate resistance. The women had im- 
bibed the spirit of the men. It was indispensable to the 
successful suitor that he should be brave. 

So do we come to see something of the forms of thought, 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 177 

and something of the passions — and the light and shadow, B °°^ K IL 
which made up the life of the Saxon and the Dane in their ,. 

•*- Summary- 

State of heathendom. The great element of the godlike in concerning 

o o " this hoa- 

that heathen system seemed to be placed in the propensity then life - 
to vanquish and destroy. But underneath all this blood- 
shed and marauding lay a conviction which was regarded 
as imparting to it manliness, nobleness, and even sanctity. 
This conviction was, that the man employed in tilling the 
ground, or selling his wares, should be reckoned a deterio- 
rated man ; and that it belongs to the tinner natures, who 
contemn such employments, to give law to the weaker na- 
tures which conform to them. If this conception was not 
clearly expressed, and reduced to an axiom, nevertheless it 
was there, and it did not work the less potently from the 
fact that untaught passion, rather than a trained logic, had 
settled it as a religious truth. Somehow, the world had 
come to consist very much of two classes — the comfort-lov- 
ing and the brave ; and if anything could be clear, it was 
thought to be clear, that the brave should be masters. It 
might be all very well that the two sorts of people should 
exist — but the one should assuredly be servant to the other, 
and whatever destruction of property or life should be ne- 
cessary to that end, could be no matter to whine and weep 
over, but the contrary. With Odin, the sword was the in- 
strument to determine who should be uppermost, and so 
should it be with all the children of Odin. Nor is it among 
barbarians only that reasoning of this sort may be traced. 
"We find it whenever right is determined by might. It was 
in this spirit that Iiengist and Cerdic, Canute and "William 
the Conqueror alike acquitted themselves. It is in this spir- 
it that the great military monarchies of Europe have be- 
come what they are. 

Tims in the life of the heathen sea-king, contempt of the 
civilized man became a feeling eminently religious ; and a 
heart which left no room to pity, became the heart regarded 
as in the highest degree meet for the pleasures of the Norse 
paradise. Barbarianism thus became a necessary condition 
of devoutness, and cruelty became a fruit of piety. The 
southern peoples were regarded, not only as the foreign, but 
Vol. I.— 12 



ITS SAXOXS AXD DANES. 

b ^k ii. as the effeminate — as natural enemies to the true children 

of nature, and to send many such souls to Odin was to live 

to some purpose. 

It was this complexion of thinking which rendered both 
the Saxon and the Dane so faithful to their pledge one to- 
wards another, and which gave such prominence in their 
history to the passion of revenge. Their confederations 
wire confederations against the civilized world, and only 
by fidelity at home could they hope to be successful abroad. 
In their hour of misfortune, in their moments of torture and 
death, their solace generally was, that their people would 
never hear of such disaster without swearing to avenge it. 
So Inguar and Ubbo came to avenge the death of their 
father Lodbrog. So Sweyne came to avenge the fate of 
his sister Gunhilda. 

But there was another source from which the courage 
of the Northman gathered Btrength. His faith not only 
taught him that it is a right thing for the sword to rule, but. 
that such rule had been decreed. He was a great fatalist. 
Odin always named those who should be slain. Every 
brave man had his work to do, and would be safe until that 
work should be done. There are two points from which we 
may look at life — from its beginning, and all in the distance 
will seem to be contingency ; or from its end, when all the 
parts will appear to have been tixed by the laws of an iron 
destiny. The worshippers of Odin looked at life as Odin 
was supposed to look at it, as it will appear at the end ; 
and in so doing they learned to persuade; themselves that, 
as nothing in the future can be changed, anything in the 
present may be dared. Great, however, was their solici- 
tude to obtain some glimpse of the future in their seasons 
of danger. Xo pains were then spared to get favourable 
responses from the auguries of the priest, or from the divin- 
ing of the sorceress.* 

It must be obvious, that among a people who lived by 
means of plunder abroad, and by the help of slaves at home, 
time must have passed in alternate hardship and indolence 
— attempting everything or doing nothing. It is not easy 

* Northern Anliq. c. Yii. Cluver. Antiq. Germ. i. c. 86. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 179 

to say which of these extremes must have tended to demor- B00K JI - 

. n Chap. 7. 

alization m the greatest degree — the coarse feasting, drunk- 

enness, and frays of the winter, or the cruelties and excesses 
of the summer. 

But under all this we may see, both in Saxons and 
Northmen, a people of great physical vigour, strong in will, 
ardent in passion, indomitable in courage, and of such high 
natural capacity as could only need to be placed under 
other influences, to fit them for realizing a form of civiliza- 
tion for themselves greatly in advance of that Roman civ- 
ilization which had become, and not wholly without reason, 
the object of their scorn. 

We now pass, then, from these warlike and heathen 
phases of Anglo-Saxon history, to mark the more silent rev- 
olution wrought by Christianity, and by the civilization 
which it did so much to promote. So long as our ancestors 
were heathen men, Frea, the god of bountifulness, was set 
up side by side with the ' Father of Slaughter ; ' and the 
beautiful myth concerning the fate of Balder, had its place 
along with pictures of the re veilings to be enjoyed in the 
halls of Yalhalla. It was left to Christianity to separate the 
true in these conceptions from the false, the good from the evil. 

The first landing of the Saxons in Britain was, as we introdnc- 
have seen, in 449. The mission of Augustine, the first chris- 
Christian preacher among the descendants of these settlers, 
was in 596. So that about a century and a half intervened, 
between the landing of Hengist, and the conversion of Ethel- 
bert, his successor on the throne of Kent, to the profession 
of Christianity. But the conversion of the South Saxons, 
the last state of the Heptarchy to abandon idolatry, did not 
take place until 685, almost ninety years later. From 685, 
Anglo-Saxon Britain may be said to be included in the por- 
tion of the globe bearing the name of Christendom. The 
Danes, indeed, brought their paganism with them ; but they 
were soon led to embrace the faith of their adopted country. 

In what remains of this chapter we shall glance at the 
leading facts connected with the introduction of Christianity 
into Anglo-Saxon Britain, and at the main features of the 
change resulting from that event. 



180 SAXONS AND DANES. 

Th'Ip. t L ^ n 592 Gregory the Great became pope. He was by 
Po^ birth a man of rank. His life from his youth was marked 

Gregory, j^ g rea ^ religions earnestness, and by great self-sacrifice, ac- 
cording to the notions of his time. Though neither a great 
genius nor a faultless man, compared "with the age in which 
he lived, he was a person of eminent ability and virtue. 
"While a humble monk of the order of St. Andrew, it 
chanced that Gregory passed one day through the market- 
place at Rome, where some beautiful boys were exposed for 
sale. Struck with their handsome features, fair complex- 
ions, and light flaxen hair, which fell in ringlets on their 
shoulders, he inquired whence they came. The answer was, 
' From Britain.' — ' Are they Christians ? ' was the next ques- 
tion. ' No, they are pagans.' ' Alas ! ' said the monk, ' that 
the Prince of Darkness should inhabit forms so lovely — that 
the beauty of the soul should be wanting, where there is 
such beauty of countenance. Of what nation are they?' 
1 Angles,' was the answer. ' Right,' said Gregory, ' they are 
angels. From what province?' — 'Deira,' was the reply. 
' Surely they must be rescued [de ira\ from the wrath of 
God. What is the name of their king ? ' — ' iElla,' said the 
slave-master. ' Eight again,' said Gregory, ' Alleluia must 
be sung in the country of that king.'* Much may not be 
said for the taste exhibited in this word-play. But the in- 
cident shows the susceptibility of imagination and feeling 
by which the future pope was characterized — qualities 
which prompted him to so many of his labours. The idea 
thus lodged in his mind was not unfruitful. He sought 
permission of the then Bishop of Rome to become himself 
an apostle to the distant heathen whose condition had so 
much affected him. He had journeyed three days on the 
road towards Britain, when messengers overtook him with 
the unwelcome tidings that the people of Rome had pre- 
vailed on the pope to revoke his sanction of the enterprise. 
In the great trouble of the capital, and in prospect of 
troubles still greater, the people feel, said the messengers, 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. ii. c. i. Chron. Sax. a.d. 597. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 181 

that Gregory is not the man to be spared for such an under- book il 

o «/ i- Chap. 7. 

taking.* 

But what Gregory was not to do in person, was to be ^JTstine 
done under his guidance. In 596, the fourth year of his 
pontificate, he deputed Augustine, and certain monks, to 
attempt the introduction of the Gospel among the Anglo- 
Saxons. Augustine was obedient, but had not reached the 
shores of Britain when the fears of the brotherhood became 
so strong, that they halted on their way, and implored per- 
mission to return. Gregory exhorted them by letter to be 
steadfast and believing, and wrote to the Bishop of Aries, 
urging him to render all needful service to the missionaries. 
Augustine and his companions committed themselves to 
their voyage, and landed in the Isle of Thanet. Ethelbert 
was then king of Kent, and Bertha, his queen, a daughter 
of Charibert, king of France, was a Christian. The strang- 
ers sent a messenger to the king, to state to him that they 
had come from a distant land, to make known tidings of 
unspeakable importance to him and to his people. Ethel- 
bert said, let all hospitality be shown to these persons ; and 
four days afterwards he met them in the open air, to hear 
from them more fully the purpose of their coming. Augus- 
tine explained to the king the Christian doctrine. Ethel- 
bert, without at once professing himself a Christian, told 
them they might preach their doctrine to his subjects, and 
that they might take up their abode in Canterbury, where 
provision should be made for their support. The forty 
monks accordingly, with Augustine at their head, entered 
that city in procession, chanting a litany, in which they im- 
plored that the divine wrath might be turned away from 
the people. 

Before the close of the year, ten thousand Saxons are its success, 
said to have received baptism. Ethelbert himself became 
a convert. But the king left his subjects to their proper 
liberty — ' for he had learnt,' says Bede, ' from his instructors, 
that the service of Christ must be voluntary, not by com- 
pulsion.' Great was the joy of Gregory on learning the 
signal success which had attended the preaching of his mis- 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. ii. c. i, § 90. 



1S2 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book il sionaries.* He wrote to Ethelbert, exhorting hirn. as Lis 

Chap. 7. . . y 

' illustrious son,' to continue steadfast in the pursuit of the 

heavenly crown, and urged him to show his zeal by casting 
down the idols, and demolishing the structures raised for 
the pagan worship. He wrote to Augustine also, giving 
him useful counsel in regard to many questions of casuistry 
and discipline which began to demand answer from him in 
his new iield of labour — cautioning him, at the same time, 
against .being lifted up with pride by reason of his suc- 
cesses and his miracles ! Augustine became archbishop of 
Canterbury, with power to ordain bishops, the pall — an 
ornament of dress which denoted a metropolitan dignity — 
being sent to him by Gregory, that he might acquit him- 
self with due form in such service?. Mellitus, Justus, Pau- 
linus, and Bufinianus are among the names of the ecclesias- 
tics sent to assist the new archbishop, and with these, it is 
said, came all things ' necessary for the worship and service 
of the church — viz., sacred vessels and vestments for the 
altars, also ornaments for the churches, and vestments for 
the priests and clerks, as likewise relics of the holy apostles 
and martyrs ; besides many books." f 

Augustine soon became aware that it had not been left to 
him to be the first to preach the Gospel in Britain. The Chris- 
tianity which the Britons had adopted while under the Ho- 
mans, had not only been preserved by them on their retreat 
into the fastnesses of Wales, but had acquired such influence 
among them as to have wholly superseded their more an- 
cient worship. But the Christianity received by the Brit- 
ons was that which had been common to the East and "West 
in the third century, while the Christianity of Augustine 
was that which obtained in Borne three centuries later. 
During those three centuries, the system of the secluded 
Britons had been comparatively stationary — that of the 
south of Europe had been undergoing many changes. In 
regard to the time of keeping Easter, and many other 
observances, the British churches followed the customs 
of the East, and differed from those of the Church of 
Borne. 

* Opera, ep. vii. 31. f Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. i. e. 28—33. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 183 

Augustine, with the aid of Ethelbert, sought a conference b c ° h Ok n. 
with certain of the Welsh clergy, in the hope of prevailing An ^~ e . £ 
on the churches of "Wales to conform themselves to the ^ e ^° ce 
Romish observances. In his first interview, neither his f £{£j s _ 
arguments nor his persuasions were of any avail. But a 
second conference was agreed upon, in which the British 
representatives were to consist of persons more competent 
to decide in behalf of their nation. The Welsh now de- 
puted seven of their bishops. These bishops are said to 
have consulted a recluse famous for his wisdom, touching 
the course it might behove them to take. The substance 
of his counsel appears to have been, that unity on the 
ground of submission as inferiors to Augustine as their su- 
perior, was not to be entertained for a moment. Let them 
arrange to approach the archbishop while he should be 
seated. If he rose to receive them, the action might be 
taken as indicating brotherhood and equality, and it would 
be well to listen dispassionately to his statements. If he 
received them sitting, his so doing would bespeak preten- 
sions to superiority fraught with mischief, and it would be- 
hove them to look on all measures proposed by him with 
suspicion. Augustine did not rise. The Welsh bishops 
acted on the counsel that had been given them. The arch- 
bishop lost patience, and said to the Britons, with much, 
warmth, that they should ere long fall by the sword of the 
Saxons, seeing that they refused to join him in preaching 
the Gospel to them. This passionate utterance was ac- 
counted a prophecy, and was said to have been fulfilled 
some years later in a battle near Chester, where the loss of 
the Britons was great, and a large body of monks, assem- 
bled to pray in their behalf on a neighbouring hill, were 
put to the sword.* 

This conference took place in the open air under an oak. 
The place of meeting was some border district, but whether 
in Gloucestershire or Shropshire is uncertain. The event 
became a theme of tradition, and a fact in history, between 
the two races. It taught such of the Anglo-Saxon clergy 
as were most disposed to make their use of the authority of 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. ii. c. 2. Chron. Sax. a.d. 607. 



184 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B c£3 t 1 ' ^ 0me *° cast tne reproach of schism on the British Church ; 

while in the imagination of the Briton, it served to identify 

the spiritual pretensions of Home, with the territorial pre- 
tentions of the Saxons. The slaughter of the Britons at 
Chester did not take place until some years after the death 
of Augustine ; and the monks slain on that occasion, were 
from the monastery of Bancor, on the river Dee — an estab- 
lishment which had long been famous for its learning, and 
the number of its inmates.* 

Dissensions Before his decease, in 604, Augustine had ordained an 

continue © 

Roman n a nd e ecclesiastic named Laurentius as his successor. Mellitus 
£j*J^. e had preached the Gospel with success in Essex, and was 
ordained bishop of the East Saxons. Justus was ordained 
bishop of Rochester. Laurentius soon learnt, that the cus- 
toms of the Britons in regard to the festival of Easter, and 
other matters, were the customs of the Christians in Scotland 
and Ireland. So near are the shores of the west of Scotland 
to those of thenorth of Ireland, that what those countries pos- 
sessed, even at that time, they possessed very much in com- 
mon ; and the Irish and Scots are in consequence frequently 
spoken of as the same people. Persuasive letters were ad- 
dressed by Laurentius and his brethren to the Britons, the 
Scots, and the Irish, urging that they should conform to 
jisages said to bo those of the universal church. But the 
nonconformists do not appear to have been moved by these 
expostulations.! 

Eeiidons j n qiq MeUitns was present at a council in Rome, con- 

reaction in i 7 

several y e ncd by Boniface IV. In that assembly there was much 

stales. «/ ^ 

consultation on the affairs of Britain ; and Mellitus returned 
the bearer of documents intended to cement the relations 
between the Anglo-Saxon Church and the See of Rome4 
But six years later, Ethelbert died. Eadbert, his son, mar- 
ried his father's widow. The Christian clergy protested 
against this incestuous proceeding. The new religion, in 

* Camden, Brit. 665, 666. This Bancor, or Bangor-is-y-Ceod, must be dis- 
tinguished from Bangor in the Menai Straits. 

There are parages in Bede which show that the Saxons and the Britons were 
severed from each other by strong mutual prejudices, and even their Christianity 
only seemed to add to their points of difference. — Eccles. Hist. ii. c. 2, 20. 

'\ Eccles. Hist. ii. c. 4. % Ibid. lib. ii. c. 4. 



EEYOLmOX EST EELIGION. 185 

consequence, was no longer in favour with the crown or the book ii. 

court. Idolatry was introduced anew. Among the East 

Saxons, also, the death of the king brought with it a similar 
revolution. All that had seemed to be gained now ap- 
peared to be lost. The clergy began to seek refuge in 
Gaul. In Essex, some time passed before any reaction 
took place. But Eadbert soon learnt to confess his error, 
and the Christian order of things in Kent was restored.* 

In Northumbria, a similar conversion was followed by Effect of the 
a similar reaction. The queen of king Edwin was a vaaon on 
daughter of Ethelbert, and a Christian. It had been stip- of the 
ulated, on her marriage, that Paulinus, a Christian bishop, 
should be a part of her household. Edwin himself at 
length became a Christian, and multitudes of his people fol- 
lowed his example. The East Anglians imitated the North- 
umbrians. Idolatry in both kingdoms seemed passing 
away. But the pagan power of Mercia prevailed over the 
Christian power of Northumbria. Edwin perished in bat- 
tle. Sud4enly every thing Christian seemed to give place to 
the return of the old superstitions.f 

The year in which Edwin fell was designated in after restoration 
times the unhappy year, so memorable was it to the North- aanity in 

, . „ . . , . n, . , , Xorthum- 

um brums ironi its crimes and its sunermgs. At the close b«a. 
of it Oswald became king. During the last reign Oswald 
had been in exile, and, in common with many of his friends, 
had found an asylum among the Christian brotherhood 
of Iona. He had there become a Christian, and on ascend- 
ing the throne of Nortlrambria was desirous of seeing the 
Christian religion restored to its place among his subjects. 
For assistance to this end he looked, not to Rome, nor to 
Canterbury, but, as was natural, to his former teachers in 
Iona. 

There is a point of land on the coast of Argyleshire called Account of 
the Isle of Mull. To the distant mariner it appears like a 
part of the main land, projecting some thirty miles into the 
sea, the river constituting it an island, being, as in the case 
of the Isle of Thanet, inland and invisible. At a distance 

* Chron. Sax. a.d. 616. Bede, Ecclcs. Hist. lib. ii. c. 5, 6. 
f Chron. Sax. a.d. 627. Bede, Ecchs. Hist. ii. c. 9 et seq. Malms, de Reg. 
i. c. 3. 



186 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B c^ ?" °^ no ^ more than half a mile from the extreme point of Mull 
is an island, of not more than three miles in length, and 
about a mile and a half in breadth. This island once bore 
the name of ' Druid's Island.' It has since been known by 
the name of Icolmkill, which means the island of Columba's 
cell : and Icolmkill has been softened in more recent times 
into Iona. It is supposed that the Druids driven from 
Mona found an asylum in this place. But towards the 
close of the sixth century its sacredness came from its 
Christian, and not from its Druid residents. Its existing 
monuments are all of a date some centuries later than the 
age now under consideration. 
P tc £ Of St. Columba two memoirs, substantially trustworthy, 

have been preserved. In common witli many men who 
rose to his kind of eminence in those ages, he was of noble 
family, lie was connected by many ties both with Ireland 
and Scotland. His settlement in Iona, at the head of the 
humble brotherhood who submitted to his authority, dates 
from C5-L The men were twelve in number, and the boat 
which bore them from Ireland was of rude construction, and 
covered with ox-hides. But the history of this man and of 
his disciples, is the history of men honestly separated to the 
pursuit and communication of religious knowledge. They 
dwelt in structures formed of rough-hewn wood, and cov- 
ered with reeds. Everything pertaining to their condition 
was in keeping in such appearances. Nevertheless they 
sent off fraternities to settle in different parts of Scotland 
and Ireland, and every such settlement was a centre from 
which missionaries went abroad to strengthen the faith of 
Christians, and to attempt the conversion of the heathen 
still left in the land. They possessed many books, labour- 
ed hard to multiply them by transcription, and great was 
the value they set on them. What learning the age 
possessed was in their keeping ; and the authority they as- 
signed to the Scriptures, and the devout spirit in which they 
studied them were most exemplary.* 

When Oswald solicited spiritual help from his former 

* Bedc, Ecclcs. Hist. iii. c. i. — iv. Adaman, Vita Columb. Cumin, Vita 
Columb. Pinkerton, Vita Antiques Sanctorum. Chron. Sax. a.d. 565. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 187 

friends in Iona, they sent to liiin Aidan, described by Bede b °ok n. 
as a bishop, and as a man of singular ' meekness, piety, and Aid "^Z7 h8 
moderation.' Aidan chose Lindisfarne, the spot now known X/thum- 
by the name of ' Holy Island,' off the coast of ISTorthumber- bria - 
land, as his residence. The king, says Bede, ' humbly and 
willingly gave ear in all cases to his admonitions, and ap- 
plied himself most sedulously to build and extend the 
church of Christ in his kingdom. So that when the bishop, 
who did not perfectly understand the English tongue, 
preached the Gospel, it was most delightful to see the king 
himself interpreting the Word of God to those about him ; 
for he had perfectly learned the language of the Scots dur- 
ing his long banishment. From that time many from the 
region of the Scots came daily into Britain, and preached 
the Word with great earnestness to those provinces of the 
English over which king Oswald presided. Churches were 
built ; people joyfully nocked together to hear the Word ; 
possessions were given by the bounty of the king to build 
monasteries ; the English youth were instructed by these 
Scottish masters ; and great care was bestowed on the dis- 
cipline of the church.' * 

Aidan, it seems, was not the first man sent in answer to 
the call of Oswald. But a brother named Corinan, to whom 
this apostleship was first assigned, returned to Iona in de- 
spair, describing the Northumbrians as too barbarous and 
stubborn to be brought under the influence of the Gospel. 
The brethren listened with disappointment and sorrow to 
these tidings. Presently a voice from the crowd said, 
' Brother, the fault has been with you. You have not borne 
with the slowness and perverseness of your hearers as you 
should have done. You should have administered the milk 
of a more gentle doctrine, until, being sufficiently nurtured 
by such means, their minds might have been raised by de- 
grees to higher truths.' It was felt that the speaker had 
given the true interpretation. The office was now devolved 
on the man who had so spoken, and the speaker was Aidan. 
The issue justified the choice. Aidan became the apostle 
of Northumbria. He traversed its length and breadth on 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. iii. c. 3. Malms, de Reg. iii. c. 3. 



188 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



book n. 

(.II A 1'. 7. 



Tho Hep- 
tarchy is 
eon verted 
t>> the pro- 
• 

Chrto. 
tianit.v. 



Tho eon- 

■i of 

onlv far- 
man'".' 



. with no other aid than his wallet and his start'. To 
convert the pagan, to teach the ignorant, to comfort the 
suffering, to befriend the poor, were the objects to which 
his life was devoted, with a spirit of Belf-sacrifice of ran 
cnrrence even among good men. So thoroughly did I Os- 
wald Becond the zeal of Aidan, that both have their place 
ints in the Roman calendar.' 11 

Oswald married a daughter of Cynegils, the king of 
Wessex, and his influence contributed probably, as much 
as the preaching of Birinns, to bring the West Saxoi 
join the Christian Btates of the Eeptarchy. This was in 
Dorchester in Oxfordshire was the first bishopric in 
Wessi ■ . Im the Bame year the East Saxons returned to the 
profession of Christianity. In 665 the powerful kingdom 
of M-ivi.t renounced idolatry. Penda, pagan and ferocious 
as he may have been, <li<l not obstruct the preaching of tin 
Gospel in his dominions. But hi> Bon Penda became a 
Christian, and married a Christian princess, Alchfled 
daughter of Oswy of Northumbria. When Penda received 
baptism, his thanes, and bis subjects generally, conformed 
t<> the new worship. H ats left Sussex the only 

country adhering to the old religion; and there it wai 
nounced in »i s "'. under the preaching of an able Saxon ee» 
atic, Wilfrid, the ostentatious and litigious bishop of 
Xork.f 

It will I , then, that the northern half of Anglo- 

Saxon Britain was brought to the profession of Christianity 
by the direct or indirect influence of the disciples of ( !olun> 
ba. Through Bernicia and Deira, the influence of the 

ttish missionaries extended to East Anglia, to Mercia, 
and even to Wessex. Gratitude is due to pope Gregory, 
and to the ecclesiastics Bent forth by him to this country. 
Their intention- were gfenerous, and their labours in a great 
degree successful. But had no thought of Britain ever oc- 
cupied the mind of the pious Gregory, or of the monk Au- 
gustine, it is clear that Britain would have been evangelized. 



* Bedi\ Eeelet. Hut iii. Malm-. d\ Reg. Matt '•' 

\ ('In- Sax. J Bede, /. ■ let. J/i<t. iii. c. 7 ct scq. Malm.''. 

at Reg. i. c. 3. M ttt, \\ i strnin. a. p. B78. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 1S9 

Had the work been left to the brotherhood of Iona, it -would book il 

i • Chap. 7. 

have been done. In the absence, however, of papal inter- 

ference, the field would not have been left to the Scots. 
The proximity of our southern coast to Gaul, would have 
invited missionaries from that quarter. Success by such 
agency would of course, have brought with it relations to 
Rome, and nothing could have prevented the Anglo-Saxon 
Chuivli from becoming ;i part of the great ecclesiastical 
system of Europe in the middle Age. It is a fact, how- 
ever, and ;i fact not sufficiently remembered by English- 
men, that the conversion of our Saxon ancestors to Chris- 
tianity is not so much due to Roman missionaries as to 
missionaries from another quarter, it was largely realized 
by other labourers, and it would have been completed by 
those labourers, had the work been allowed to remain in 
their hand-. 

The mere change of country, in the experience of the CaM *g. ftp . 
Anglo-Saxons, was nnfavonrable to the continuance of the tba , tovent , 

•^ — cunngo or 

same religion. Time is necessary to give sanctity to places. countr . v - 
Their power to awe the imagination comes not from what 
they are, so much as from the shadows of the past which 

hover ahoiit them. All such place- have their real or sup- 
posed histories, and those historic- people the thoughts of 

the worshippers with images of the bygone. No new forest, 
in any new region of the earth, could have affected the 
mind of the Saxon, or of the Dane, as their own German, 
or Scandinavian grove- had affected them. To have left the 
ancient homes of their gods musl have been felt at times 
like leaving their worship altogether. In the new country, 
the groves, the temples, the very images of the gods, would 
all be new ; and the efiect of all this novelty must have 
been, in many cases, a speedy and perceptible abatement 
of faith in their old divinities. "With rude heathen nations, 
the idea has always been prevalent, that the earth is par- 
celled out among gods as among men, and that the gods 
proper to a country are those which have been in a sense 
naturalized to it. There would grow up by degrees, ac- 
cordingly, both with Saxon and Dane, a feeling that their 
change of country might naturally bring with it some 



190 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book p- change in religion. They had now ceased to be sea-kings. 
The generation soon grew np to whom industrial and set- 
tled habits were familiar — the rearing of cattle, and the 
tilling of the ground. Some taste for a more regular and 
civilized life was thus induced. In such things, even the 
Britons were capable of becoming the teachers of the Sax- 
ons. It is at this season, so favourable to change, that the 
Christian religion crosses their path ; and this religion 
comes to them as that of the most powerful and civilized 
peoples of their own time and of past time. Some of the 
monuments of that civilization they had seen. But the 
rumour of what might be seen on the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean, where all the civic greatness of past ages seemed to 
have become tributary to the religious faith of the present, 
suggested comparisons which could hardly fail to awaken 
a wholesome suspicion in regard to the claims of their own 
faith. It was the destiny of all the northern nations, to de- 
spise the civilization of the south for a season, and then to 
adopt it. 

Bede relates an incident showing how readily the Sax- 
ons learnt to contemn their sacred places in this country. 
When the Gospel was first preached in INorthumbria, 
Coifi, the high-priest, urged the king to embrace it, declar- 
ing that he was himself satisfied that the gods they wor- 
shipped were imaginary. To testify his sincerity, he prof- 
fered to be himself the man who should first defy and 
profane the objects they had been wont to fear and to hold 
sacred. The Saxon priest was not to bear arms, nor even 
to mount a horse ; but Coifi called for a horse and spear, 
and before the king, and the crowd of courtiers and peo- 
ple, he rode up to the entrance of the temple, and threw 
his spear with such force across the sacred enclosure, that 
it entered the opposite wall. Many of the people looked on 
with astonishment, expecting to see the god avenge the 
insult. But no sign followed ; and they then did the bid- 
ding of the priest, in aiding to demolish the idol and his 
sanctuary.* 

It was another advantage on the side of those who had 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. ii. c. 13. 



KEVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 191 

to commend the Gospel to the heathen men in Anglo-Saxon B <£°J; £• 
Britain, that in their time the great era of theological con- Sus ^^ n 
troversy had reached its close. Nothing need be said here -e*^! 8 ' 
with regard to those subtle distinctions concerning the Di- trovers y- 
vine Nature by which not only the churches, but the na- 
tions, of the East and West were so often shaken, through 
several centuries. The Christianity embraced by all the 
northern nations who had descended southward, with the 
sole exception of the Franks, had been Arian Christianity. 
But before the mission of Augustine, Spain, the last of the 
Arian kingdoms, had signified its adhesion to the Catholic 
creed.* 

Of course, the orthodox doctrine did not preclude the ?, esem - 

■*• blances be- 

teacher of Christianity from giving an impressive prom- l^onand 
inence to the unity and supremacy of God. Tacitus, and ^fauiT 
other authorities, allege that the more ancient creed of the 
Teutonic race embraced a lofty monotheism. If such was 
the fact, it is reasonable to suppose that this doctrine was 
not wholly lost among the Saxons and the Northmen ; and 
those among them who retained any hold on this truth, 
would not only be among the most likely to listen to the 
claims of the Gospel, but the most likely to influence others 
in its favour. Those who had learned to look upwards with 
awe to one Illimitable Nature as over all, would here find 
their highest conceptions realized and surpassed.f The One 
Existence, and whose All-presence the interminable forest, 
the boundless plain, or the mystery of space, was supposed 
to represent, would be to them no longer as an ' Unknown 
God. ? The custom of ascribing the attributes of almost 
every other god to AVoden was, as we believe, a deteriorated 
form of this great truth. 

The priest Coifi, mentioned before, says, ' I have been The old 
persuaded long since that we worship what has no existence, comes 

1 . . . . powerless. 

The more diligently I have sought truth in that direction, 
the less have I found it.':}: This doubt and inquietude, Ave 
may suppose, was much more common in those times than 

* Neander, Eccles. Hist. Milman's History of Latin Christianity, ii. 
269, 270. 

f Tacitus, Germania, ix. Mallet, North. Ant. c. iv. 
\ Bede, Eccles. Hist. ii. c. 13. 



192 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. history lias reported. It was natural it should be felt as the 

Chap. T« * 

northern darkness came under the influence of the southern 

light. Error was exposed. The mind was so far prepared 
to receive truth. When Edwin, king of Northumbria, con- 
sulted his thanes on the question of granting a hearing to a 
Christian teacher, an aged man was heard to say, ' To me, O 
king, the life we now live, in comparison to that which is 
unknown to us, is like the swift flight of a sparrow through 
the hall in which you are seated at your meat during a 
wintry night. The fire burns in the midst. The room is 
warmed thereby. Storms of rain and snow rage abroad. 
The sparrow enters at the one door, and soon departs at the 
other. Whilst within he is safe for his little season, but he 
soon passes away into the dark winter whence he came. 
So to me is the life of man. lie comes for a short space. 
But of what went before, or what is to follow, we are 
wholly in ignorance. If this new doctrine can give us some 
certainty on such mutters, it is fitting we should hear it and 
submit to it.' The historian adds, that many elders and 
king's councillors spoke to the same effect.* We may be 
sure that jNTortliumbria was not singular in possessing men 
among its ' elders ' and ' councillors ' influenced by such 
thoughts. The effect of Christianity on such minds was to 
conduct them from doubt to certainty. 
The new But this change was not a transition from error to un- 

faith was ° • i i 

not pure. m ixed truth. Christianity gave these leutons a priesthood 
in the place of that which they were to abandon, and a sac- 
rifice for sin in place of those which they were to offer no 
longer. But this priesthood had diverged considerably 
from its primitive model, and this sacrifice took with it 
ideas and adjuncts unknown in the purer ages of the church. 
Still, that religion should have its ministers separated to 
their office, and vested with some dignity and authority ; 
and that sin should be expiated by sacrifice, were Teutonic 
ideas, which were rather purified and elevated, than super- 
seded, by Christianity. It was, moreover, quite in harmony 
with German thinking that the Supreme Being should not be 
the immediate object of approach in worship. The human- 

* Bede, Ecclcs. Hist. ii. c. 13. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 193 

ity of Christ was to tlie Saxon, the sum of all teaching as to book il 
what man should be. It was, also, to him, a manifestation — - 
of all he could need to know, in regard to the moral charac- 
ter of the Creator. But even this softened presentation of 
the Divine through the human, did not embrace enough of 
the descending element to meet all the cravings of the re- 
ligious spirit. Hence the worship of the Virgin. The pity 
of woman was thought to be more likely to yield to entreaty 
than the pity of man, even that of the best of men — of the 
One Perfect Man. For the man in this case is not merely 
a man. His nature is Divine as well as Human. Hence 
even the humanity of the Redeemer came to be regarded as 
too pure, too awful, too widely separated from our frail na- 
ture to be approached without fear. In this manner the way 
was prepared for the worship, not only of the Virgin, but 
of the whole host of saintly mediators which have their 
place in the Roman calendar. To worship Deity through 
humanity was felt to be the only possible worship ; and the 
less the humanity should be removed from our own actual 
experiences the better, so there might be goodness enough 
to pity, and power enough to help. 

With the authority of revelation in their favour, Chris- 
tians should have known how to dispense with the ser- 
vices of these subordinate mediators. But the tendency 
of human nature is everywhere towards the mythology and 
worship which have their full development in polytheism. 

One feature of the new religion must have served to oid and 
commend it strongly to the acceptance of the Teutonic showed the 
races — its respect for the character of woman. The women spect for 
of the Germans often dwelt in camps with their husbands. 
Their children were born and educated amidst the spec- 
tacles and dangers of war. Even among the pirate hordes 
of Scandinavia, all the better elements of the chivalry 
known in a later age in Europe may be found, imbued with 
some loftier qualities, which our later chivalry was too 
Asiatic in its texture to embrace. Among the Teutonic 
nations, women were the companions and equals of the 
men, not the mere instruments of their pleasures. The 

strong feeling of the Asiatic is short-lived. He soon learns 
Vol. I.— 13 



19-i SAXONS AND DANES. 

B c!ia? t L to dispense with his toy when obtained. Even the Greeks 
and Romans knew little of the Germanic sentiment in this 
respect. The penalties with which the northern nations 
guarded the chastity of women, and the worship shown by 
them towards virgins who remained such for religious rea- 
sons, is known from many sources besides the G&rmama of 
Tacitus. Nothing seemed them so fitting, as an expression 
of the religious spirit, as the consecration of women to its 
service. In the East, the highest function of religion — in- 
spiration, was almost confined to men. In the north of 
Europe the rule was reversed. The highest gifts there 
came upon women. The Veleda of Tacitus had her succes- 
sors among the believers in the Edda. In all this we see a 
state of mind disposing the Saxon ami the Dane to accept 
the prescribed worship of the Virgin, and to conform to a 
system which raised female piety to the place of the saint 
and intercessor, awarding the highest praise to those who 
chose virginity in this life, that they might rise to the 
higher purity of the next.* 

similar Naturally allied with the worship of saints was the wor- 

tendency In ' . . . . . 

recardto ship of anirels. Natural, too, was it, that the worship of 

objects of c ° ' l 

worship. the good among created natures, should be connected with 

fear of the evil among them. The mythology which 
broughl benignant natures into near connexion with human 
affairs for benevolent ends, would be sure to bring malig- 
nant natures into action for ends noi benevolent. Heathen- 
ism, creature worship, has always presented these two as- 
pects. In this view, the Christianity of the seventh cen- 
tury had become too nearly assimilated to the false religions 
to which it .should have been opposed, and which it should 
have superseded. As the long disputes of the church con- 
cerning the nature of the Deity came to an end, men seemed 
to fall into the habit of thinking less and less of the presence 
of the Divine Being, and appear to see the government of 
mundane things as if left more and more in the hands of 
these subordinate agencies. Hence the spiritual revolution 
accomplished by the Christianity of this period was much 
more limited and imperfect than it should have been. 

* Tacit. Germ, viii.-xi. Hist. iv. 16. Mallet, North. Antiq. c. viii.-xi. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 195 

In the conflict which come up between the heathenism book ii. 
of the Saxon and the Dane and this form of Christianity, Th ^77 eat 
three great results are observable. The first consists in the res , ult -j l n " 

O volved in 

class of facts presented in the character and history of the [^^en 
more ambitious of the Anglo-Saxon clergy, who became in- s iou - 
tent on raising their order to the position of a new power in 
the state. The second, in such facts as had their origin in 
the ascetic spirit of the ecclesiastical system of the period. 
The third, in such effects as served to show the great gain 
to humanity from the displacing of the heathen faith by the 
Christian, notwithstanding the evils arising from the two 
sources above named. 

Where the supreme power is strong and arbitrary, Rise of 

i • • • • «i • • priestly 

whether in rude communities, or in a civilized despotism, power in 

r ... the Anglo- 

the power of the ministers of religion has been commonlv Saxon 

x ~ " / church. 

felt as a needful check on its excesses. Barbarian chiefs 
trusting to their sword, or monarchs living in the midst of 
the splendours and flatteries of an Asiatic sovereignty, have 
been disposed to look with less apprehension on the power 
of the priest, than on power as existing elsewhere. To 
listen to the expostulations of a priest has been felt as de- 
tracting nothing from their greatness, inasmuch as the voice 
of the priest might be the voice of the authority whence 
that of kings themselves is supposed by such men to have 
been derived. But the strength of the priest must be sim- 
ply moral or spiritual strength ; and the contests arising 
between sovereign and priest, accordingly, must often seem 
to be maintained between belligerents whose resources are 
very unequal. But if the clergy were bound to feel that 
their weapons were not carnal, they could readily persuade 
themselves that what they might not do by force, they were 
at liberty to accomplish by such other means as were at 
their command. Here, as everywhere, craft came to be 
very largely the refuge of the weak against the strong.* 
Here, too, as everywhere, the apparent necessity for avail- 
ing themselves of such means, seemed to change the nature 
of the means. The disingenuous, the false, often ceased to 
appear as they had been wont to appear. That there are 

* Heercn, Researches : Persia, c. ii. ; Egypt, app. § iv. 



196 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 7. 



Policy of 

the MedltB- 

val clergy 
not wholly 
unreason- 
able or in- 
sincere. 



circumstances in which ends sanctify means, is a maxim 
which had been received and acted npon vejy widely long 
before Rome, ecclesiastical or civil, came into existence. 
This inversion of moral feeling in the governed, is one of 
the effects sure to be produced by a harsh and arbitrary 
sway on the part of those who govern. 

In comparison with the barbarian chiefs who led the 
warriors of the north southward, the Christian clergy Avhom 
they encountered in these new regions might seem to be 
utterly powerless. But these clergy were the ministers of 
the God of these new regions ; and whether attempting to 
convert the barbarous strangers, or to influence their con- 
duct when converted, these men always spoke in the name 
of their God. It was natural, in such circumstances, that 
the clergy should be disposed to magnify their office. It 
was the one instrument by which they might hope to pro- 
tect themselves, and those who looked up to them as pro- 
tector b.* 

Motives arising from this source — motives by no means 
wholly selfish, or wholly insincere — prompted the clergy to 
give their sanction in so large a measure to the popular 
faith in miracles. Many of them must have been aware 
that this credulity of the people was often grossly abu.-ed. 
But it can hardly be doubted that the clergy themselves 
were firm believers in the perpetuity of miraculous powers 
in the church. Every reader of Bede's Ecclesiastical His-, 
tory must derive this impression from it. Such men could 
not of course be insensible to the value of such apparent 
attestations to their own authority, and would not be much 
inclined to disturb the popular belief by indulging in 
doubtful criticism on such matters. Heathen priests every- 
where laid claim to prophecy and miracle. They made the 
interference of their gods in human affairs to he perpetual. 

* Ethelbcrt, the first Anglo-Saxon king who professed Christianity, was in- 
duced to make the penalty for wrong done to church property twelve times 
greater than was provided against the same wrongs as done to the property of 
the laity; and to the latest period in Anglo-Saxon history the difference in favour 
of the church was as seven to one. So of the private possessions of churchmen — 
the penalties which guarded the property of the bishop were elevenfold, the 
priests ninefold, the deacons sixfold — Ancient Laws and Institutes of Enqland, 
i. 393. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 197 

They pointed to a hereafter of happiness or the contrary as book il 

awaiting those whom they were wont themselves to pro- 

nounce as worthy or unworthy. The Christian clergy had 
to deal with these pretensions. They did so by claiming 
miraculous powers for the church ; by bringing many super- 
natural agencies into the concerns of this world ; and too 
often by materializing heaven and hell to the extent deemed 
necessary adequately to affect the hopes and fears of the 
society about them. How far they were themselves deceived 
in making such representations cannot now be determined. 
But in the prevalence of such beliefs and feelings they found 
the machinery of their power, and freely and skilfully did 
they avail themselves of such appliances. The help of this 
kind which they needed came ; and by means of it, in great 
part, they were to become a new power, in the state of 
things which followed upon the new settlement of the 
northern nations. 

In prosecuting this policy the Anglo-Saxon clergy, in £h 
common with their order over Europe, made a free use of 
the confessional, and of their supposed authority to absolve 
delinquents from their sins, and to dispense the gifts of grace. 
Documents have come down to our time which show, that 
not only the common sins of the people, but all the secret 
and imaginary forms of vice, had been reduced to a system, 
that the confessor might be adequately prepared for the dis- 
charge of his office. Secret things belonging to personal 
history, to family history, to all history, were thus to be laid 
open ; and vices which had never entered the thoughts of 
the penitent, were thus made familiar to the imagination 
by the questionings of the priest. With these almost end- 
less distinctions of evil, came a scheme of penalties of almost 
endless elaboration. In some of these penalties we may 
trace a concern for the sincere restoration of the offender ; 
but in the many fiscal exactions which were made, if some 
care was shown for the poor, there was no want of care for 
the church and the clergy.* At the same time, it was zeal- 

* In one of these directories for priests, the penitent after confessing all 
remembered sins, of the mind, and the flesh, that nothing may be omitted, is 
made to say : ' I confess to thee all the sins of my body, of skin, of flesh, and of 
bones, and of sinews, and of veins, and of gristles, and of tongue, and of lips, 



198 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



of church 
dues. 



B q£* l L ously inculcated, that without confession there could be no 

absolution, and that without absolution there could be no 

fitness to partake of the communion — no salvation.* Of 
course the Roman clergy brought this scheme with them ; 
and the more they were able to free themselves from the 
presense of the Scottish missionaries, the mere easy it became 
to act on this system in all its part-. 

Concerning some other uses to which this theory of 
chun-h power was applied, a judgment may be formed from 
the following canon enacted under king Edgar: k And we 

enjoin that the priest remind the people of what they Ought 
to do to God for dues in tithes, and in other things : first- 
plough aim-, fifteen days after Easter; and a tithe of young 
by Pentecost : and of earth-fruits by All-Saints; and' Rom- 
feoh' by St. Peter's mass; and church-scot by Martinma&.'f 
The priest in the Anglo-Saxon church, was required to 
preach to the people every Sunday — Ave do not know how 
often his preaching was on Buch topics.^ [n regard to the 
clergy of the Middle Age generally, some excuse should he 
made, inasmuch as they were shepherds who had to sustain 
their authority over flocks not always given to obedience. 

The clergy among the Anglo-Saxons who made the largest 
use of these elements of rule were distinguished by the 
homage they were disposed to render to the Papal See. 
They were wise enough to discern the advantage of allying 
everything of this nature with the prestipt t<> he derived 

from the fame, the Bplendour, and tin- authority of Rome. 
The first man, in the history of the Anglo-Saxon church, 
who became conspicuous by his zeal in this direction, was 
Wilfrid, bishop of York. 

and of gums, and of teeth, and of hair, and of marrow, and of every tiling, soft 
or hard, wet or dry.' — Ancient Laws and Institute* of England, 404. 

* Ibid. 158, 159, 415. 

| Ancient Laws, 400. For the fines imposed in case of neglect on any of 
these i>.>iiiN, and the mode in which distraint was to be made, see the Laws of 
Ethelred, 147. 

\ Ancient f.< iws, 400. Laws of Alfred, 24. Laws of Alfred and Gothrum, 
7:'.. Laws of Edgar, 114, 146, 156. Some of the laws designed to regulate the 
conduct of the clergy are curious. Priests, besides their own 'lore,' are required 
to learn some handicraft. Monwnenta Ecclesiastica, 396, 400, 447, 448. They 
were not to be gleemen, hunters, or hawkers, but to apply themselves to their 
books, and to have orthodox books (398, 400-1, 418). It is enjoined, too, that 
no priest should take the scholar of another (396). "What does this mean ? 



REVOLUTION EST RELIGION. 199 

"Wilfrid was the son of a wealthy family in Northumbria. book X 7 L 
He was a man of commanding presence, of good parts, Wi ^f~ 
restless and energetic, and withal, we must add, not a little 
vain and ambitions. With these last qualities, however, he 
combined a sufficient amount of prudence and self-govern- 
ment to allow of his acquiring considerable reputation as a 
religious man. His Christian sincerity, indeed, should be 
conceded. But his passion appears to have been, to associate 
with, the faith he professed as much of secular pomp and 
authority as might well be brought into such a relation. 
His principal biographer has disfigured his early life with 
fictions, and is so manifestly partial, that all statements from 
that quarter must be accepted with caution.* 

In 65-t Wilfrid made a journey to Home. There the 
young Saxon was much flattered by persons high in author- 
ity, as a man of no ordinary promise. After sitting at the 
feet of learned men in Koine, and spending several years in 
some of the principal cities of the Continent, Wilfrid return- 
ed a travelled man, to be looked upon with wonder by many 
of his homely countrymen. 

The first grateful return made by Wilfrid for the favour 
shown to him in Rome, was in opposing himself to the 
Scottish clergy on the question about the time of keeping 
Easter, and on some other matters. This question about Eas- 
ter was attended by some material inconveniences. In the 
family of the king of ISTorthumbria, for example, the queen, 
who had been educated in Kent, followed the Roman cus- 
tom, and might be seen humbling herself as in Lent, while 
her husband, who followed his Scottish instructors, might 
be quite otherwise employed, because with him the season 
for humiliation had given place to the season for rejoicing. 

It was, accordingly, deemed expedient that a meeting of ^SJ" 
the two parties should be convened, that so this diversity 
of usage might, if possible, be brought to an end. The 
parties met at Whitby. Wilfrid, accompanied by the bishop 
of Paris, and other distinguished men took the Romanist 
side. Colman, bishop of Lindisfarne, and his Scottish 
brethren, pleaded the authority of the line of tradition, 

* Eddius, Vit. S. Wilfridi. Bede, Eccles. Hist. v. c. 19, et alibi. 



200 SAXONS AND DANES. 

b °°k ii. through Anatolius and Columba, to the Apostle John. To 

the authority of Columba Wilfrid opposed that of St. Peter, 

' to whom the keys of heaven had been given.' Here the 
king interposed to ask, ' Is it so ; do you admit that St. Pe- 
ter has the keys of heaven V Colman, it is said, replied in 
the affirmative. ' Then I decide for St. Peter,' said the king, 
' as I know not what the consequence may be of doing 
otherwise.' 

This matter being settled thus summarily, the tonsure 
question remained. The Scottish brethren shaved the hair 
from the front of their head in the form of a crescent. The 
Romans removed it from the crown of the head in the form 
of a circle. On this weighty matter the king was silent. 
But "Wilfrid urged the authority of St. Peter for the tonsure, 
as for the keeping of Easter, and insisted that the monks of 
Iona must have borrowed their usage from Simon Magns.* 
One thing is clear, if Wilfrid did not bring much learning 
to this discussion, he brought an abundance of effrontery 
and dogmatism. From this time the "Roman custom gained 
ground, and at no distant day became general. Colman 
relinquished his bishopric and returned to Iona. 

Not long after this discussion at Whitby, Wilfrid was 
chosen bishop of York. But, unhappily, of all the bishops 
then in England, one only was found to be free from the 
schismatic taint of the Scots in the matter of Easter and 
the tonsure — a fact which suggests much in regard to the 
extent of the field which had been covered by the labours 
of the Scots in England down to this period. In this diffi- 
culty, Wilfrid resolved to seek ordination in France. At 
Compiegne, the zeal of the Saxon ecclesiastic in the cause of 
the true Catholic discipline was honoured by the presence of 
twelve prelates at his consecration. The gilded chair in 
which Wilfrid was placed, was borne aloft by the same num- 
ber of episcopal hands — no person of a lower dignity being 
allowed to touch it. So gratifying to the stranger were these 
marks of esteem, that a long interval passed, it is said three 
years, before his return. In the meanwhile another had been 
appointed to his see. But one of the first things done by 

* Eedc, Eccles. Hist. iii. c. 25 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 201 

Theodore, the new archbishop of Canterbury, was to secure J* 001 * li- 
the re-election of Wilfrid to the see of York.* 

In this position the bishop found means to gratify his ins disputes 
taste for splendour, and by his novel achievements in archi- and Theo- 
tecture, in decoration, and in other matters of ecclesiastical 
pageantry, he filled the country with talk and wonder. 
Even the king and the court, it was said, were overshadowed 
by the bishop and his cathedral. But with tastes of this de- 
scription, Wilfrid could blend, upon occasion, a monastic se- 
verity of manners. He well knew, as all sagacious church- 
men have known, how to make these opposite elements work 
towards one result. 

Ethelreda, the queen of Egfrid of ISTorthumbria, had 
made a vow of virginity. It is said that a former husband 
had respected that vow. Wilfrid, in his functions as a priest, 
decided that Egfrid ought to respect it, and went so far as 
to favour the escape of the queen to a convent. Egfrid 
deeply resented this proceeding. Ercemburga, whom he 
afterwards married, regarded Wilfrid with a still deeper 
aversion. She pointed to his buildings, his lands, his hospi- 
talities, and his followers and retainers, and to all as showing 
that the man who could play the monk so demurely, when 
that mood might avail him, was resolved on being account- 
ed the greatest in the land, the king not excepted.f 

Theodore of Canterbury was a Greek of Tarsus, who, at 
the request of the king of Kent, had been chosen by the 
pope to fill that see. He became intent on adjusting the 
affairs of the Anglo-Saxon churches, so as to secure conform- 
ity throughout the Heptarchy to the authority and usage of 
the see of Canterbury. In prosecution of this object he as- 
sembled a council at Hertford, and proceeded to divide 
large bishoprics into smaller, both in East Anglia and in 
Mercia. His next step was to do the same with the bishopric 
of York4 Resistance had been made to what was done in 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. iii. c. 27. Eddius, c. xii. 

| Bede, Eccles. Hist. iv. c. 19, 20. Historia Eliensis, i. 26. Mabill. Act. 
SS. Ord. S. Bened. ii. 711. It is singular that Eddius speaks of Wilfrid as hav- 
ing a son. No reproach was cast on him on this account. We must suppose, 
therefore, that his son was born in wedlock. But when did he marry? Scarcely 
before he was a priest. We know nothing, however, of his wife. 

% Pope Gregory had urged that the bishoprics of the Anglo-Saxons should be 



202 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B ch2p V' ^ ast Anglia anc l Mercia ; but two malcontent prelates had 

been deposed by the firm hand of the metropolitan. Wilfrid 

protested against the contemplated change in his diocese. 

Egfrid and Theodore insisted on submission. To their 

npjl'ais to amazement Wilfrid signified his intention to take the case to 

Koine. t | ie p a p a ] g cc ^ an( j t gee ]j judgment upon it there. This 

■was to pour oil upon the flame. That the pope might advise, 
or counsel, in regard to ecclesiastical matters in England, or 
elsewhere, was understood. But that he should be appealed 
to in this manner, as an authority, and an authority beyond 
and above both king and metropolitan, was regarded in this 
country at that time, as a piece of extravagant presumption, 
bordering upon treason.* 

Wilfrid, however, was better versed than his opponents in 
the precedents and maxims of the papacy in relation to such 
e:i>es. He knew that such acknowledgments of the appel- 
lant jurisdiction which the see of Rome was aiming to 
consolidate, were always welcome in that quarter. In fact, 
the principles involved in this appeal were to be the ground 
of controversies between thcpapal see and the crowned heads 
of Europe through centuries to come. Messengers were 
sent, i: i- said, to Theodoric, king of the Franks, and to 
Embroin, mayor of the palace, to arresl Wilfrid on his way, 
and to put his followers to the sword. Wilfrid's biographer 
assures us, on the other hand, that the bishop left England 
on this errand amidst the tears of many thousands of his 
monks. 

But the elements favoured the escape of the delinquent 
prelate. The vessel in which he embarked was driven on 
the coast of Friesland. The pagan Frisians, and the Chris- 
tian bishop thus cast upon their shores, spoke the same 
language. Wilfrid, with the versatile power, and the love 
of action, which characterized him, gave himself to the 
work of a missionary among these people. The influence he 
acquired over them by his preaching, and by the interest 
which he evinced in their affairs, disposed him to extend his 

divided so as to be small. Bede, in bis well-known epistle to Egbert, urges the 
same thing. 

* Bede, Ecclcs. Hist. iv. c. 3, 4. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 203 

stay among them nearly twelve months. The fisheries of B00K n - 

the year proved unusually successful. The grateful people 

attributed this to the coming of the stranger, and to the 
Good Being whose minister he was. The man who had 
contributed to give his Northumbrian countrymen, in place 
of their buildings of wood, covered with reeds and thatch, 
edifices of stone covered with lead, and protected and adorn- 
ed with glass ; who, when opening the church he had built 
at Ripon, a building constructed of smoothed stone, with its 
aisles formed by lofty columns, might be seen standing on 
the steps of the altar, and heard reading over, in the presence 
of king and nobles, and of a wondering crowd of people, 
descriptions of lands assigned to that church, and of other 
lands in that district once assigned to sacred uses when the 
Britons who dwelt there were Christians, and in effect claim- 
ing that those lands should be restored — the man, in short, 
who, in his policy and bearing, seemed to anticipate all that 
the great churchmen in after ages were to become in our 
history, is the man who may now be seen inspecting the 
nets of the Frisian fishermen, seated in the huts of their 
humble families, or gathering about him the king, and the 
chiefs, and the people of that rude land, that lie might 
preach to them the Universal Fatherhood of the One True 
God, and the coming of his Son to die for man's salvation.* 
In this honourable service Wilfrid was the precursor of 
Wilbrord, and Boniface, and other English missionaries, who 
did so much to bring Germany under the influence of Chris- 
tianity. 

Two years passed before Wilfrid presented himself to the 
pope, and obtained the decision of a Roman synod in his 
favour. Armed with the decree of pope Agatho and his 
synod, which doomed the layman to perdition, the ecclesias- 
tic to deprivation, who should dare to resist it, Wilfrid 
returned to England. But the time when papal thunder 
should be terrible had not come. Theodore heeded it not. 
Egfrid treated it with derision. Wilfrid was thrown into 

* Eddius, c. xvi. xvii. It is proper to state, that in his architectural 
achievements, Wilfrid had been anticipated in a good degree, and in a much 
less ostentatious manner, by Benedict Biscop, the founder of Wearmouth 
Abbey. — Bede, Vita. Ab. 



204 



SAXOXS AXD DAXES. 



prison, and placed in solitary confinement. Released, after 
a while, be would have sought an asylum in Mercia or in 
Wessex. But the queen of Mercia was a sister of Egfrid ; 
the queen of Wessex was a sister of Ercemburga. It was 
in these circumstances that Wilfrid turned his footsteps to- 
wards Sussex, and sought the home among pagans which 
seemed to be denied him among Christians. 

Wo might have supposed that the country of the South 
Saxons would have been one of the last to prove attractive 
to the exiled bishop. For it had happened that, on his way 
from France after the extravagant ceremony of his ordina- 
tion, Wilfrid was wrecked on the coast of Sussex. The peo- 
ple along that coast were wont to claim all that fell into 
their hands from shipwreck as lawful spoil, seizing the prop- 
erty as their own. and selling the people as slaves. The 
ressel was stranded, but the crew resolved to defend them- 
selves to the last. Wilfrid and his attendant eeelesiastics 
encouraged the seamen in their purpose by exhortations, 
and by loud prayer tor their success. But the pagans had 
their spiritual weapons as well as the Christians. Upon a 
rising ground opposite them was the pagan priest, using 
his enchantments and calling upon his gods. But in the 
fray, a stone from a sling entered the head of the priest, and 
he fell dead. The sailors had bravely repulsed the wreckers 
in three onsets, when the tide rose, the wind became favour- 
able, the vessel floated, and was again to sea. 

Wilfrid, in now looking towards Sussex, was aware that, 
though the people were pagans, the king and queen had re- 
ceived baptism as Christians. There was also a feeble colo- 
ny of Scottish monks at Boshun, near Chichester. But 
nothing effectual had been done towards converting the 
people. The preaching of Wilfrid was a new thing among 
them. He taught them, moreover, many useful arts along 
with the doctrines of the Gospel. In a time of great dearth 
he instructed them in fishing, so as to give them a new and 
unexpected supply of their wants. In gratitude for these 
services, Selsey — the Isle of Seals — was assigned to him as 
a residence ; and in that place he exercised his functions 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 205 

as a bishop over a considerable body of clergy for five B ° 0K "• 
years.* 

Subsequently, "Wilfrid prosecuted his labours as an 
evangelist in the Isle of Wight, under the favour of Cead- 
walla, who had become possessed of the throne of Wessex. 
But death removed archbishop Theodore. Egfrid of Nor- 
thumbria fell in battle. Aldfrid, his son, restored Wilfrid to 
his see. Still the troubles of Wilfrid were not at an end. 
Aldfrid had been educated in the school of Iona. Wilfrid's 
reverence for the papacy, and passion for prelatical magnifi- 
cence, had increased rather than diminished. Aldfrid was 
disposed to check these tendencies ; and on his attempting 
to elevate Ripon into a bishopric, Wilfrid resisted, and again 
fell into disgrace. 

In a national council assembled at Eastonfield, the refrac- Eastonfiefd. 
tory prelate was called upon to express his unqualified sub- 
mission to certain constitutions drawn up by the late arch- 
bishop Theodore. Wilfrid, so self-governed and genial in 
his manner towards inferiors, betrayed on this occasion the 
haughty and passionate temper natural to him. He express- 
ed his surprise that the council should think of placing the 
authority of archbishop Theodore, a branded schismatic, 
before that of the pope ; censured his accusers as having 
incurred the guilt of resisting the judgment of the Roman 
see for now more than twenty years ; and recounting what 
lie had done to bring the churches of the different states 
into a nearer relation to that great centre of ecclesiastical 
unity, he told them emphatically that his case should again 
be submitted to that tribunal for decision. Nor were these 
empty words. Though seventy years of age, Wilfrid again 
presented himself in Rome, and again judgment was given 
in his favour. But the words of king Aldfrid were, ' For no 
writing, coming as ye say from the apostolic chair, will I 
consent to alter one word of a sentence that had been agreed 
to by myself, the archbishop, and the dignities of this land.' 
On the death of Aldfrid, however, many influences were 
employed to bring about the restoration of Wilfrid to his see. 

* Bede, Eccles. Hist. ir. c. 13, 19. Eddius. 



206 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. This was at length accomplished. He died shortly after, at 

the age of seventy-six.* 

significance The life of Wilfrid would be of small interest if it con- 

of the life 

of wiiiri.i. cerned himself alone. But it is highly illustrative of his age. 
It shows how great was the influence of the Scottish mis- 
sionaries among the Christian states of the Heptarchy ; how 
foreign to the notions of the Anglo-Saxons of that day was 
that appellant jurisdiction in the Roman see, so boldly in- 
sisted on in later times ; how early the type of the ruling 
churchman of the Middle Age — combining the ascetic and 
the worldly, the patronage of monks with the defiance of 
crowned head — began to make its appearance among us; 
and how soon our rude Germanic forefathers gave evidence 
of being capable of throwing all their characteristic energy 
into a new creed, of substituting civilized tastes for those of 
the barbarian, and the battles of the ecclesiastical leader for 
those of the old sea-king. The intelligence, refinement, and 
convictions of the Saxon bishop, as compared with the 
priest of Saxon paganism, gave him a position which was 
new in the history of his race ; and if we see how these ac- 
quisitions were used for evil, we can also see how they were 
used for good. 
OdoandSt For the next memorable exhibition of the sacerdotal 

monachism spirit in Anglo-Saxon history, we descend from the age of 
8a4X- Wilfrid to that of Odo and Dunstan — two centuries later. 
To this interval belong some of the most destructive rav- 
ages of the Northmen. But to this interval also belong the 
names of Egbert, and Alfred, and Athelstan. The splen- 
dour of the reigns of Athelstan and Edgar was favourable 
to the aspirations of ecclesiastical ambition. 

All the forms of Christianity which obtained a footing in 
Britain in this early period of its history, included a strong 
element of monasticism. Wha1 we know concerning the 
monks of Bangor and Iona, presents evidence enough on 
this point as regards the Britons and the Scots; and the 
fort v monks in the procession of Augustine as he entered 
into Canterbury, were only an instalment of what was to 
follow. The rough energy of the Anglo-Saxons was not 

* Eddius, c. 42 et scq. Bede, Eccles. Hist. v. c. 19. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 207 

likely to bow to any system the character and outward signs book il 

of whicli were not strongly marked. With such a people, 

there was much in the separation and the self-consecration 
which seemed to be characteristic of the monastic life, to 
give it impressiveness and power. Hence among those 
who professed themselves Christians, not a few took up that 
profession in its severest forms. In this island of the West, 
as in the crowded cities of the East, the quiet and seclusion 
of the convent became attractive in the measure in which it 
was felt that to be in the world was to be in the midst of 
unsettledness, suffering, and crime. The great multiplication 
of monasteries in the early history of Anglo-Saxon Christi- 
anity resulted largely from such influences. Much delusion 
no doubt lay under these appearances. We feel obliged 
to suppose that the firmer and warlike temper of the Anglo- 
Saxons was unduly diminished by this means, so as to have 
rendered them unequal to the crisis when compelled to stand 
face to face with the Northmen. Certainly, the impression 
of the Northmen was, that the new faith of the Saxons had 
destroyed their old courage, though the occasions were not 
few in whicli they were undeceived in that matter. And 
many who fled to the monastery did not find monks all that 
they seemed to be. The good expected from such compan- 
ionships was not always realized. Nevertheless, the influ- 
ence of the institute was great and enduring. Even the 
clerks — the secular clergy, as they were called in distinc- 
tion from the monks — lived in the places where their first 
rude cathedrals had made their appearance, much as the 
monks lived, having all things in common under their bishop. 
The progress of Christianity soon required that clergymen 
should be located in parishes ; but the bishop always retained 
a considerable number of clergy with him who lived together, 
conducted the cathedral service, and went forth under epis- 
copal direction to the discharge of various official duties in 
the surrounding district. The residents in connexion with 
our cathedrals to this day give us the form of this old usage 
without its spirit. * 

But in the time of Odo and Dunstan, the clergy in Eng- 

* Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, books ii. viii. 






SAXONS AND DANES. 



Marriase 
among the 
Anglo- 



v f'iiu- V' land, in common with their brethren over a great part of 
the Continent, were, many of them, we may perhaps Bay 
most of them, married men. At that time, strange as it 
may Bonnd to modem ear-, this might be said of the monks, 
as well as of the parochial and cathedral priesthood. The 
monks of St. Benedict, introduced by Wilfrid and Benedict 
Biscop, took the vow of chastity, as it was called.* Bnt 
the monks of Wales and of [onagaveno such pledge, and 
often availed themselves of their liberty to marry. During 
the ninth century the Benedictines were all but annihilated 
by the b words of the I lanes. So that when Dun-tan broached 
his project of reform in the middle of the tenth century, the 
monks of Glastonbury and Abingdon were the only men 
of their profession who had bound themselves to a life of 
celibacy.f 

I mnstan has been justly described as the Eildebrand of 
the Anglo-Saxon church. Be resolved, if possible, to force 
the law <>t' celibacy on all ecclesiastical persons. By this 
policy, Eildebrand would hav< ed Buch persons from 

all th family and country, and would have substituted 

in the place of both, a passion for the Bplendour and power 
of the church — that is, of the clergy. The aim of Dunstan, 
a century earlier, it' uol i" the Bame extent denned and 
avowed, was to the Bame effect Be would have merged 
the patriot and the man in the priest. Edgar, Buccet ding the 
unfortunate Edwy, deemed it wise to avail himself of the 
power of Dunstan and his party. By royal warrant, many 
of the married clergy were expelled. Bitter Btrife was 
diffused from one end of England to the other. Bu1 the 
successes of the reformers were partial only, even in their 
life-time, and little Bigns of them were perceptible twenty 
years after their (i 



< >.!•> nri'l 
reformers. 



• Bede, Vita A.b. Bede, in his epi I picture of 

of the monasteries in hia time. But his seal on the Bide of the 1 
celibacy of ecclesiastical persons makes bis authority less weighty on those 
points than on Bome others, 

t Wharton's ' ■■. i- -I s - Kemble's ii. c. 

viii. Lappenberg, ii. I 

J Lava and i 'and. Khar's Laics, 111-111. Osborn. 

Eadmer. Malms, dt Reg. lib. ii. c. 7. Vita Lavs. Milman's Eittory of 
Lathi Christianity, iii. ll:j-110. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 209 

Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, who distinguished him- book n. 

self in this crusade against the married clergy, was a Dane, 

and had been a military chief. He had become a student 
and a scholar, but brought not a little of the severe temper 
which men expect in the camp, into the affairs of the church. 
Dunstan had been from his youth, and from choice, a monk, 
and a monk of the greatest zeal in all things monastic. But 
with the asceticism of the anchorite he combined the inge- 
nuities of the man of science, and the taste, in some degree, 
of the man of letters. The genius, however, which qualified 
him to excel as a statesman, and in other secular pursuits, 
was accounted of value only as it might be made to sub- 
serve his policy as a churchman. More than once the secu- 
lar clergy prevented his elevation from his position as abbot 
of Glastonbury to a bishopric. But he at length became 
bishop of Worcester, bishop of London, and archbishop of 
Canterbury, ending a life in which, according to his biogra- 
phers, his miracles almost ceased to be such from their fre- 
quency, only that his tomb might become still more famous 
for such prodigies after his death. His name lias a con- 
spicuous place among the saints in the Roman calendar. 

The conduct of Odo and Dun-Ian towards Edwy and story of 

. . . ,'. Edwy and 

Elgiva is described in Borne form m all our histories. Edwy, Eigiva. 
who was but sixteen years of age on his accession, had mar- 
ried Elgiva, a lady who must have been of noble, if not of 
royal descent, inasmuch as the marriage was said to have 
been invalid on the ground of consanguinity. Edwy, it 
seems, on the day of his coronation, withdrew earlier than 
was deemed respectful from the table where the bishops and 
thanes were at their festivity. At the suggestion of Odo, 
the bishop of Lichfield and the abbot of Glastonbury went 
in search of the king, whom they found in an apartment 
with his wife and the females of his family. Edwy was 
unwilling to return to the drinkers in the hall ; upon which 
Dunstan, himself then but just thirty years of age, seized 
the king vehemently by the hand, replaced the crown, 
which he had laid aside, upon his head, and applied offen- 
sive names to the females present, who protested against 
his rudeness. In this manner he forced the young king 
Vol. I.— 14 



210 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B c!u.p V' Dac ^ *° ms forsaken seat. It is possible that Edwy had been 

at fault. But the conduct of Dunstan betrayed .so much 

priestly insolence, that nothing could be more natural than 
the deep resentment of the king and his relatives.* 

Edwy now called upon Dunstan to produce the treasure 
which the late king had committed to his trust. Dunstan 
evaded this demand by quitting the kingdom. The young 
king, however, was no match for the difficulties which 
such a quarrel entailed upon him. His measures against 
the monastic party disposed them to conspire against him 
in favour of his younger brother Edgar. Alercia and Korth- 
umbria were induced to withdraw their allegiance from 
him. Odo was connected with Wessex, and remained nom- 
inally faithful to the king. But he insisted that Elgiva 
should be put away. The servants of the archbishop forced 
the unhappy queen from her palace, branded her countenance 
witli hot irons to efface her beauty, and banished her to 
Ireland. And we have all heard the rot- that after a 
short time her beauty was restored; that she returned to 
Mu-land in search of her husband ; that at Gloucester she 
fell again into the hands of the military servants of Odo, 
who subjected her to cruel mutilation by severing the 
sinews of her legs ; and that a few days later, both king and 
queen died, from broken-heartedness, or from some foul 
play which has never come to light, f 

Such (]ci'(]> could sacerdotalism perpetrate, and perpe- 
trate with impunity, at Borne junctures in Anglo-Saxon his- 
tory. Enough has ben stated to show how this temper, 
especially as allied with its great coadjutor monasticism, 
could make void all the great principles of natural morality, 

• Ifalmsbury, ii. ",. Hint. Ilamcx. c. 7 ; Wallingford, 543 ; and the Cotton 
MSS. relating to the history of Abingdon; all speak of Elgiva as the wife of 
Edwy. The Saxon Chron. also says that Odo separated them 'because they 
were too nearly related ' — ad an. 958. According to the biographers of Dun- 
stan, Elgiva was not the wife of Edwy, and they heap all kinds of abuse on 
that lady and her mother. But with these men a wife within the prohibited 
degrees would be no wife, and the savage fanaticism with which they write 
almost puts them out of court. In the language of churchmen in those days 
all marriages not according to the canons were adulterous. 

f Citron. Sax. an. 958. Osborn, de Vita Odonis, ap. Wharton, lib. i. 84. 
Flor. Wigorn. an. 959. fits*. Barnes, c. 14. Malms, de Pont. lib. i. 'Rex 
Westsaxonium Edwinus in pago Glouccstrcnsi interfectus fuit.' — Turner, from 
the Cott. MS. Hist. Anglo-Sax. ubi supra. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 211 

wherever the interests of churchmen might be served bv book ii. 

* Chap. 7. 

such means. Nothing can exceed the extravagance with 

which the triumphant party applaud the conduct of Dun- 
stan and Odo, or the inhumanity with which they write 
concerning the sufferings inflicted on their victims. The 
insults, the slanders, the mutilations, the murders — all are 
holy, pre-eminently holy. Odo even acquires the name of 
Odo ' the Good.' 

Edgar, who succeeds his brother, in place of resting in 
the venial fault of being over-fond of an affectionate wife, 
fills the land with tales and ballads relating to his amours. 
The daughters of the best families were liable to be de- 
manded as instruments of his pleasures, even under the roof 
of their parents. The convent itself was no security against 
the lawlessness of his passions. Nor did he scruple to use 
the dagger to avenge himself on the man who interposed 
between him and such gratifications. But his one virtue, 
in becoming the tool of an ambitious priesthood, was allowed 
to cover his multitude of sins." 

It would be easy to multiply instances showing the extent The better 
to which that pharisaical tendency which puts the ritual and Christianity 

t /> i i •• ir> -i i ovcr Anglo- 

polity ot church organizations betore the ' weightier matters Sa ™ n 

^ Britain. 

of the law,' had found a place in the Christian life of the 
Saxons and Danes in Britain. But we forbear. It will be 
more agreeable to look to the features of the new life intro- 
duced by Christainity which are of a better kind. 

The only written laws which have reached us from the 
Anglo-Saxon period of our history, are laws which have 
come from kings professing Christianity, and acting in con- 
junction with the Christian clergy.f In justification of an 
apparent severity in some of these enactments, it may be 
mentioned, that the weight of penalty is nowhere greater, 
upon the whole, than in the laws of Alfred. :{: In many in- 
stances, too, we can trace the influence of the clergy in 
abating rigour in this respect, and in urging from time to 
time that laws of the severer kind, which it was not deemed 
expedient to repeal or to amend, should be administered 

* Malms, de Reg. ii. 8. 

f Ancient Laws and Institutions of England, including laws from Ethelbert 
to Edward the Confessor. \ Ibid. 2*7-45. 



212 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. with a humane discretion.- Care for the poor and the 

weak is also to be placed among the unquestionable virtues 

of the Anglo-Saxon clergy. < )ne third only of the contribu- 
tions made professedly to the church was appropriated to 
their own use. The next third was reserved for the repairs 
of church buildings, and for the expenses of public worship. 
The remaining third, or at least a fourth, was assigned to 
the poor, f Xo one can charge these men with being respect- 
ers of persons. It was their manner generally to exact the 
right thing, whether in behalf of thane or serf, of the lord 
or of his man. The frequent preaching enjoined on the 
parish priest must have been, with all its faults, a great 
benefit to the people.^ The language of sueh men as Bede, 
and Egbert, and Elfric, OH the duties of the Christian pas- 
tor, oblige us to suppose that there were not a few in those 
times who had learnt to estimate their pastoral work very 
much according to a scriptural standard. When we find 
great importance attached to being able to repeat the creed 
and the paternoster, we may be disposed to think that the 
Christian intelligence existing among Buch a people must 
have been very low. But the fact does not warrant any 
strong inference of that nature. Such tacts orrwv among 
ourselves where no such conclusion is admissible. On the 
sacredness of an oath, on the importance of truth-speaking 
in all things, and ou just conduct between man and man, 
the teaching of the Anglo-Saxon priest was grave, reiterated, 
and enforced by appeals to the most weighty motives. No 
thoughtful man will undervalue such influences in their re- 
lation to the great interests of socii ty. 

The venerable Bede, we scarcely need say, may be cited 
as an example of the Christian life of the better kind among 
our Saxon ancestors. But even his Christianity had its alloy. 
His credulity, for such a man. was extraordinary. In his 
narratives concerning his time-, the miraculous is not only 
so common as to meet you at every step, but it is often BO 
puerile as to deserve to be placed among some of the most 
contemptible inventions of that nature in church history. 

■ Ancient Laws and Institutions of England, 135, 1G1, 176, 17*7-354. 
t Ibid. 116, 445. % Ibid. 445. 



REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 213 

He was also considerably infected with the error of his book n. 

J Chap. 7. 

times in regard to the supposed virtues of celibacy ; and 

concerning the intention of married life, and the laws to 
which it should be subject, even when permitted. Nothing, 
in fact, can exceed his occasional extravagance on these 
topics. Those Manichean doctrines, which degrade the 
domestic and social relations in the name of religion, were 
avowed and inculcated by Bede in the worst manner of his 
day, and he thus contributed his share towards the mis- 
chiefs which resulted from them. But on most other matters 
he expressed himself with great sobriety and good sense. 
His judgment and his heart were in the main candid and 
liberal. He differed from the Scottish missionaries, but he 
did so charitably. He was himself catholic and orthodox, 
but he appreciates honestly the good to be found in the 
example or writings of men who were not so accounted. 
Above all, to his severe labours as a student, he added the 
feeling of fervent piety — of a piety largely allied with all 
those virtues which fit men -to become benefactors in regard 
to the things of this life, while fixing their strongest aspira- 
tions on another. The character of Bede as before us in his 
memorable epistle to his friend archbishop Egbert, exhibits 
sound sense combined with resolute honesty, and with a 
deep devotedness of spirit. We can believe that in this 
type of piety we see that of not a few among our Saxon 
fathers. 

Benedict Biscop, the founder of the abbey at Wearmouth, Biscop. 
and the friend and patron of Bede, appears to have been 
distinguished by all the good qualities which became so 
conspicuous in his protege. Aidan, if less remarkable as a Aidan. 
scholar, was more abundant than either of these good men 
in the apostolic work of oral teaching, making his voice and 
presence familiar to the people of the whole space of country 
extending from Hull to Edinburgh, and from Sunderland 
to Whitehaven. Nor did the spirit of Aidan die with him. 
To Egbert, the archbishop of York, Bede could offer 
counsel on the duties of a Christian prelate of the holiest 
description, assured that it would not be offered in vain. And 
while such men prosecuted their various labours at home, 



214 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B cS?. ?' man y of their countrymen — as "Wilbrord, Boniface, AVilli- 
bald, and Willehad — became distinguished as missionaries 
abroad. Boniface became the apostle of Germany. Wil- 
brord taught with success from Friesland to the Rhine. 
According to Alcuin, no mean authority, "Wilbrord was a 
man of a noble aspect and deportment, of great moderation 
and prudence, eminently holy and forbearing, of a most 
persuasive eloquence, and distinguished by courage, patience, 
and perseverance. Willibald and Willehad were men 
scarcely less remarkable. But it is in such men as Alfred 
and Alcuin that we see the fullest influence of Christianity 
on the Anglo-Saxon mind — piety without asceticism, faith 
without credulity, the noble in manhood elevated in all 
things by the pure in religion. Concerning these great men 
we shall have something more to say elsewhere. 

The names we have mentioned may be taken as those of 
classes representing the great phases of the Christian life in 
the experience of our Saxon and Danish ancestors. The 
sacerdotal, the superstitious, and the truly Christian, all 
were there — these elements being more distinct and prom- 
inent in some, and more variously combined in others. In 
some instances, the Christianity adopted is manifestly so 
superstitious, fanatical, and demoralizing, that we are almost 
disposed to doubt whether it would not have been better 
that such men should have remained in their old heathenism. 
But these instances were not common. Speaking generally, 
the integrity, the benevolence, and the purity realized by 
the religion of the Cross, were such as the mythology of the 
Saxon and Northman sea-kings could never have called into 
existence ; and such as in the case of the Alfreds and Alcuins 
of those days left everything possible from that source at 
an immeasurable distance. The revolution — intellectual, 
moral, and spiritual — which was thus accomplished, was 
great, and pregnant with greater things to come. The 
Saxon king who deserts the duties of his throne under the 
plea of becoming religious in a convent ; or who could leave 
his lands exposed to the ravaging of an enemy, that he 
might do pilgrimage to the shrines of the apostles, shows 
us how religion may degenerate into superstition, supersed- 



REVOLUTION EST RELIGION. 215 

ing our natural obligations in place of enforcing them. But book il 

in the case of a Ceadwalla or a Canute, we may see something 

beyond and better than superstition, even in these pilgrim- 
ages to Rome. It must have been an influence of no feeble 
sort which taught natures so sternly moulded to bow thus 
before a new authority, and to learn, as well as to unlearn, 
on so large a scale. Natural curiosity joined with religious 
feeling in prompting such men to such pilgrimages ; and 
we may be sure that the result would be, not only to deepen 
religious impressions, but to widen sympathy with all the 
objects of civilized life. Rome embraced something more 
than the Papal see, as did the journey thither and back 
again. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT IX ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. 
book ii. rpiIE heathen life of tlie Saxons and the Danes, described 

Chap. 8. 

Relation - in the preceding chapter, has shown, in some measure, the 

chief and na tnre of the government which obtained among them 
when they first became known to civilized Europe. We 
have seen what the Danes were in the ninth century. Such 
the Saxons had been in the seventh. In their own land the 
eldest Bon inherited the property of the family. The for- 
tune of the younger was dependent on the personal quali- 
ties which might enable rn'm to attract followers as a pirate 
and freebooter. 

Bui even in such rude confederations there musl be 
laws. The fundamental law binding the leader and his 
adherents was substantially that known in later time as 
binding the chief and his vassal. As the relation between 
these parties in their piratical excursions was voluntary, it 
rested of course on mutual stipulations. And when the 
Saxons ceased to be marauders, and settled in the countries 
they had devastated, this relationship was perpetuated. It 
continued to be necessary to the common safety, and was 
still accounted sacred. It then came to be a relation hav- 
ing respect to the holding of land. The Anglo-Saxon vassal 
— for such he was in fact before so named — pledged him- 
self to love all whom his chief loved, to loathe all whom his 
chief loathed, and to be obedient in word and deed, pro- 
vided that the chief on his part should fulfil the conditions 
claimed by his vassal on entering into such bonds.* It was 

* These are the words: 'By the Lord, before whom this relic is holy, I 
will be to X. faithful and true, and love all that he loves, and shun all that he 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 217 

the fidelity of the Saxons and Northmen to these vows B00K n 

J . Chap. 8. 

which made them so formidable even while they were hea- 

thens. "When they began to take their place among settled 
and civilized nations, this fidelity remained conspicuous in 
their history. 

Mention may be made in this place of an instructive story of 

* *■ # Cyneheard. 

instance on this point. It is from the history of Cynewulf, 
king of Wessex. Cynewulf had been called to the throne 
by the thanes of Wessex in the place of Sigebyrcht. The 
dethroned king, and a younger brother named Cyneheard, 
became exiles. Sigebyrcht fell by the hands of a man 
whose lord he was said to have injured. Some thirty years 
after the death of Sigebyrcht, Cyneheard returns to Wessex 
with eighty-four sworn adherents, resolved to watch the 
movements of Cynewulf, and to attempt to possess himself 
of the throne. Unsuspicious of danger, Cynewulf one even- 
ing left Winchester, with a small number of followers, to 
visit a lady, an object of his affection, at Merton. Cyne- 
heard and his friends stole from their hiding-places in the 
neighbouring woods, followed in the track of the royal 
party, and, as night came on, surrounded the house into 
which the king had entered. The king's attendants were 
dispersed in the neighbourhood. On hearing a noise out- 
side, Cynewulf rose from his bed and hastened to the door. 
There his eye fell on Cyneheard, upon whom he instantly 
inflicted a wound. But the assailants were quick in pro- 
tecting their leader, and the king soon lay in his blood upon 
the floor. The noise of this strife, and the shrieks of the 
female, brought the servants of the king to the spot. But 
the deed was done. Cyneheard proffered the king's atten- 
dants safety and wealth if they would embrace his cause. 
His overtures were rejected with indignation. Every man 
who had been in the train of Cynewulf perished, in the des- 
perate effort to avenge the death of his lord. The only sur- 
vivor was a Briton, who owed his life to a wound which 
disabled him, and which was supposed to have been mortal. 

shuns, according to God's law and according to the world's principles, and 
never, by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do aught of what is loathful 
to him — on condition that he keep me as I am willing to deserve, and shall 
fulfil what our agreement was, when I submitted to him and chose his will.' — 
Ancient Laws of England, 76. 



218 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ir. News of what bad happened soon fled to "Winchester. 

Chap. 8. . n -i i • 

"Wivcrth a thane, and Osnc an ealdorman, summoned their 

retainers, and rode with all speed to the place. Cyneheard 
met them at the gate of the house, pleaded the wrongs of 
his family, reminded them that many of his followers under 
that roof were their own kinsmen, and promised them rich 
possessions if they would aid him in his object. Their answer 
is said to have been : ' If there be kinsmen of ours among 
you, let them depart, but our murdered lord was dearer to 
us than they ; and it shall never be ours to submit to those 
who have shed his blood.' The kinsmen among the con- 
spirators replied : * We made the offer to the king's attend- 
ant- that yon make to US, and they chose to die rather than 
accept it. Yon shall not find that we are less faithful or 
less generons than they.' Wiverth and Osric began the 
assault The resistance was obstinate — desperate. Tho 
fight ceased only as the lasl <>t' the conspirators fell. Cyne- 
heard was not dead, but was left to die of his wounds 
through the forbearance of Osric, who had been his >i>onsor 
in baptism.* Such was the spirit in which the Saxons and 
the Danes had been wedded to the fortunes of their chiefs. 

Where the leader has his prescribed or understood duties, 
in common with those whom lie leads, what is done must 
he .lone by joint counsel, and in gatherings which will par- 
take of the nature of deliberative assemblies. The following 
picture of the proceedings of such an assembly in ancient 
Germany, may he taken as giving us the mode, substantially, 
in which matters were transacted by the Saxons in Ilolstein, 
and the Northmen in Scandinavia. ' In cases where all have 
a voice, the business is discussed and prepared by the chiefs. 
The general assembly, if no sudden alarm calls the people 
together, has its fixed and stated periods, either at the new 
or full moon. Tins is thought to be the season most propi- 
tious to public affairs. Their passion for liberty is attended 
with this ill consequence — when a public meeting is an- 
nounced, they never assemble at the stated time. Regular- 
ity would look like obedience ; to mark their independent 

* Chron Sax. ad an. 755. Fl. Wigorn. ad an. 784. Wcstmin. ad an. 786. 
Hunt. 196, 197. Malms, de Reg. lib. i. c. 2. 



REVOLUTION EST GOVERNMENT. 219 

spirit they do not convene at once, but two or three days b °°k ii. 

are lost in delay. When they think themselves sufficiently 

numerous, the business begins. Each man takes his seat 
completely armed. Silence is proclaimed by the priests, 
who still retain their coercive authority. The king, or chief 
of the community, opens the debate ; the rest are heard in 
their turn, according to age, nobility of descent, renown in 
war, or fame for eloquence. No man dictates to the assem- 
bly ; he may persuade, but cannot command. When any- 
thing is advanced not agreeable to the people, they reject it 
with a general murmur. If the proposition pleases, they 
brandish their javelins. This is their highest and most hon- 
ourable mark of applause : they assent in a military manner, 
and praise by the sound of their arms.' * We have now 
to see how the principles at the root of such usages were to 
come into action in the history of those branches of the Ger- 
man race which found their home in Britain. 

In plundering adventures abroad, Saxons or Danes might ]^" , ^ 10ld * 
agree to share in a common danger, on the condition of par- ^ is lo ° f 
ticipating in a common gain. But at home, some other basis p^""" 
of social connexion was necessary to social existence. This 
basis was found in the possession of land. Every people 
has its country or land, and its manner of disposing of that 
land in different holdings for its own advantage. Our ear- 
liest knowledge of the German tribes, presents them to us as 
settled upon arable land, surrounded with forest pastures, 
and as claiming a kind of property in both, according to laws 
written or understood, and laws guarded by some of the 
severest sanctions of religion. In fact, the principles of 
government introduced by the Germanic race in Britain, as 
elsewhere, rested on two foundations — on the possession of 
lands, and on distinctions of rank, as depending more or 
less on such possession. To be a free man, was to be a free- 
holder, — that is, a holder of land. In so far, the legislation 
of the Teutons, and that of the ancient Spartans and Romans, 
was the same. The history of the political institutions of 
the Anglo-Saxons, accordingly, is the history of the con- 

* Tacitus, Germania, xi. Lappenberg says it does not appear that there 
was any king among the Germanic races who settled in Britain (ii. 307). Bede 
ecems to say the same thing. — Hist. v. 10. 



Bettlcn. 



220 SAXONS AM> DANES. 

book ir. ditions on which lands were possessed; of the priv- 
( "nvp. b. .. l / * 

ueges wmcn went along with 6uch possessions; and ol tlie 

different laws intended to secure to the different ell 
determined by their different relations to the land, the safety 
and rights pertaining to them. These classes consisted of 
the noble, the freeman, and the serf. 
Local The names of places in Anglo-Saxon Britain, names 

famines or home by the same places to this day. can be shown to have 
Honsof been to a Large extent patronymii — name- of the family, 
elan, or tribe settling in them. What the name- of the 
Campbells and Afacgregors have been in the comparatively 
nt history of Scotland, these local names were among 
the hands of men who, in the fifth and sixtl i centuries, 
foughl for a settlement in Britain and found it.* The Bet- 
tiers in such localities, we may suppose, were not, in all 

i of the same hi 1. In an emigration so protracted, 

and the result of so many influences, this was not to have 
hen expected. But the dominant man, or the dominanl 
tion, among the new comers, gave name to the lands which 
were to be possessed; and that name, we have reason to be- 
lieve, was generally a family or clan name. In the greater expe- 
ditions of the Saxons there won hi be contributions from many 
tribes. Bui these remained as separate bands, fought as 

such, and Bettled as Mich, in the new country. In A.nglo- 

Saxon history they become; to some extent, what the 
Romans, the Luceres, and the Sabines had been in Roman 
history. It is to be remembered thai these names were 
not in their first applications the names of cities. They 
were names given to the lands appropriated. The life of 
the Teutonic races had not been a city life. They were a 
pastoral and agricultural people. It was the work of time 
in our history to give existence to towns and cities, which 
should seem to monopolize the names that had first been 
given to the lands wholly irrespective of them, f 

* Flaccs, the names of which have so originated, are often marked as end- 
ing in ing or ling; nl o by the terminations ham, hvrtty /"», ttede, trie, geat, &c. 
— Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, i. 69. Lappen. i ; . 819, 320. 

f But it must be borne in mind that all men were noi holders of land. 

Heme side by Bide with these relations to land grew up relations between 
persons. Every man, whether free or not free, was bound to have his supe- 
rior — his lord. Strangers whose lords were not known were men for whose 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 221 

Every district so formed was a little state. It enacted B q®^ g L 
its own laws, regulated its own affairs, and armed for its T — — 

' o Local go- 

OWll defence. It possessed full local means for dealing with Ternment 

its local questions. This came in part from the necessities 

of the case, and is known as a matter of history. But 

union on a larger scale was necessary. From the union 

of these districts came the shires, or the counties, and from 

the union of counties came the kingdom. But while every 

district consisted of a body of persons possessing land, the 

shire, as such, had no land. The organization of the shire 

was simply political, not territorial. It existed for the 

better protection of territorial interests as belonging to the 

districts, and the districts might assign to it compensation 

for such services ; but the shire authority was simply thai 

vested in certain greater landholders by the less for their 

common benefit. General action could only be taken by 

means of such central authority. But the province of the 

central power left a large field to local independence.* 

The men inhabiting the districts mentioned consisted The free 

° and tho 

mainly of two classes — the free and the not free. The dis- notfrce - 
tinction of the freeman Mas, that he possessed land within 
the limits of the community. By that fact he is entitled 
to privileges, and bound to special duties. It gave him the 
right to bear arms ; and, if so disposed, to redress his own 
wrongs. But passing by the local court, and taking the law 
in his own hands, he was left to his private means in meet- 
ing such private hostilities as might be thus provoked. Next 
to the pride of bearing arms was that of wearing long flowing 
hair, which was restricted to the free of both sexes. The 
freeman could join the guilds or associations formed by his 
fellows for religious or politieal purposes ; could change his 
place of abode at pleasure ; and was entitled to take part in 

good behaviour no man was known to be responsible, and for whose welfare 
no man was bound to care. The ' lordlesa ' man, accordingly, in Anglo-Saxon 
law, was little better than an outlaw, and, in fact, was dealt with as an out- 
law. Even men who travelled from plaec to plaee as ' chapmen, 1 were viewed 
for this reason with suspicion, and were made subject to special restraints by 
special laws. — Ancient Laws and Institutions of England, 11, 12, 14, 19, 37, 
50, 51, 55, 70, 85, 90, 94. Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, bk. i. c. 'J. 

* The man refusing to attend the gemote when summoned was liable to 
heavy costs, and even to death, should he be obstinate. — Ancient Laws, 89. 
Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, bk. i. c. 2. 



222 SAXONS AND DANES. 

B cLa? "' tne P assm g, or m the abrogation of laws, and in the appoint- 

■ ment of officers to places of civil or military trust. His 

presence was expected at the public council, and it belonged 
to him to take part in judging of cases between man and man. 
But with these privileges came the obligation to bear such 
burdens as the voice of the community should impose, and 
to be prepared to engage in war, whether offensive or defen- 
sive, as required by that authority. * 

The not The not free, who dwelt among the free, had come into 

that condition from various causes. Some by birth, some 
by crime, and some by marriage. Some by losing their 
possessions, and being seized in person by their creditors. 
But conquest had reduced the greatest number to this level, 
it did not, indeed, follow that a vanquished people should 
always be an enslaved people. In some cases that result 
ensued — ensued rigorously ; but in general a less severe 
course was taken. Circumstances, and the temper or policy 
of the victor, sufficed to break the force of the calamity. 

The not free whose condition was in the least measure 
degrading, consisted of men who erased to possess land, to 
bear arms, or to take any part in public affairs, but who 
were protected by Borne chief or lord as the cultivators 
of certain Lands, on condition of their rendering certain ser- 
vices, or paying a certain tribute. Tacitus describes this as 
the condition of the Large mass of dependents who bore the 
name of serfs or slaves among the ancient Germans, f The 
distance was great between such a condition and that of the 
serf who became the mere chattel of a master, to be muti- 
lated, sold, or put to death by him at pleasure. 

The condition of the Anglo-Saxon serf of the lowest 

* It should be stated that the name ccorl, denoting the freeman in Anglo- 
Saxon law, comprehended persons, a majority of whom stood in the most 
varied relations to the persons under whom they had placed themselves as their 
lords. — Lapp. ii. 319. Two-fifths of the population at the Conquest are sup- 
posed to be of this class. 

f Germania, xxv. The majority of those denominated freemen were under 
the protection of some lord, civil or ecclesiastical. The classes known by the 
names ' bordarii,' ' geburs,' ' cotsetlas,' and others, were chiefly employed on 
the land, and rendered various contributions and services as a rental. Many 
of the Britons were freemen, and their wergild was according to status and 
property. From the time of the Danish rule, the distinction between the 
Saxon and Welsh in England, gradually disappears. It is found latest along 
the borders of the free Welsh provinces. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 223 

grade was truly grievous. He could neither represent him- B £®* I 8 L 
self nor others. His interests were all in the keeping of -^7^7 
another hand. He had no standing in any public court. 
His oath was of no value. His lord claimed possession of 
him, and of all that could belong to him, as he would have 
claimed possession of a horse, or of any other quadruped 
properly his own. As the serf had no property, he could 
pay no fine ; and, should he prove a delinquent, the mulct 
must be exacted in torture upon his skin and his flesh. 
Generally, the serfs passed from hand to hand with the 
ground to which they were attached. Their children of 
course inherited their degradation.* 

But while it is not to be doubted that the sufferings 
of persons of this class were often great, it is maintained 
by humane and well-informed authorities on this subject, 
that the homesteads, the clothing, and the food of the 
Anglo-Saxon serf would admit of comparison with the same 
means of comfort in the lot of our own peasantry, f It is 
clear also, that the differences of capacity and desert, even 
among those who were alike serfs, led to a great difference 
of treatment. Above all, manumission was possible. The 
generous might set the bondsman free, or might purchase 
his freedom. Such instances were not wholly unknown 
even among the pagan Germans. X They happily became 
very frequent among the Christian Saxons of Britain. Many 
edifying examples of this nature were supplied by the Anglo- 

* The number of slaves registered in the Domesday Book at the Con- 
quest is 25,000. One of the laws of Ina forbids the master to sell his slave to 
be carried beyond sea, even though he should have committed a crime. (Laws, 
xi.) The wergild of the slave went half to the master, and half to the kindred 
of the slave. Slaves in the above record are found to be most numerous in 
Gloucestershire, where they are as one in four to every freeman ; and in 
Cornwall, Devon, and Stafford, where they are as one in five. The numbers 
diminish as wc remove from the Welsh border, until we come to counties, as 
Lincoln, Huntingdon, Rutland, and York, in which not a slave is registered. 
But in these counties the lower class of the not free, who at the same time 
were not slaves, increases. The condition of this class often bore too near a 
resemblance to that of the slave class elsewhere. The word loot, which occurs 
in a law of Ethelbert, is supposed to refer to a class of unfree Saxons whom 
the invaders brought with them. — Leg. xxvi. It was one of Alfred's laws that, 
if any man bought a Christian slave, the slave should be free after six vears' 
service ; and the punishment for stealing a freeman to sell him into slavery 
was death. — Ancient Laics ami Institutions of England, 21, 22. 

\ Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, i. c, 8. 

\ Tacitus, Germania, xxv. 



224 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. & 



Saxon clergy ; and where they could not prevail to extin- 
guish servitude, they did much to improve the laws, and to 
soften the customs in relation to it.* 

As the not free gave place in all things to the free, so 
the ordinary freeman gave place to the noble. The noble 
was a freeman, claimed his privilege, and acknowledged his 
obligations as such. But his estate was larger, and free 
from various burdens to which the lands of others were sub- 
ject. He not only took his place in the placitum of his 
district or county, and of the Witanagemote, but he was 
of the class to whom it pertained to prepare and regulate 
the public business, and to give execution to the public 
will. The people might elect, bul to the higher offici 
the judge, the military chief, the king — the noble only 
could be elected. On the life of the noble a much higher 
price was Bet than on the life of the mere freeman. In 
him, the community with which he was more nearly con- 
nected found it- natural centre and sovereignty, and through 
him it could speak and act in regard to other eommuni- 

the men who were noble from birth and 
possessions, and who stood in this political relation to their 

respective communities and neighbourhoods, there was a 
nobility which grew up by degree- of a different description 
—a nobility by sen ice. This class consisted of the military 

retainers about the person ofthe king. The junior BOns of 

noble or wealthy families were often pleased with the cour- 

* A I Institutions, 40, 41, 48, 129, 162. Kemble's Anglo- 

Saxons, i. c. vii. The Christian clergy came into the place and power of the 
old pagan priesthood, very few of whom, as observed elsewhere, would .-rem 
to have followed their countrymen in their migration to this country. The 
wergild of an archbishop was that fixed on the life of a king's son. The bishop 

: on the level of the ealdorman, the next in rank to royalty. He took 
part with the ealdorman also as an equal in the jurisdiction of the county court. 
The ealdorman had his gemote for the slave, as the king had his gemote for 
the nation, and by the ealdorman and the bishop the secular and ecclesiastical 

tions which came up in their respective jurisdictions were considered and 
decided. 

f The name 'ealdorman' expressed our idea of nobility. This was a dig- 
nity, it seems, which the king could not confer without t 1 of his 
Witan. But the dignity, even so late as the time of Alfred, was not always 
hereditary, nor always even for life. It came to be a pretty general rule 
wards that the rank ofthe father should pass to the son. — Palgrave's Common- 
wealth, ii. 291. Ellis, Introduction, i. 108. Heywood's Dissertation on Ranks. 
Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, bk. ii. c. 4. Lapp. ii. 312-314. 



DEVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 225 

tier and military life they were thus permitted to lead, book ii. 
The law of primogeniture assigned the paternal domain to — — 
the eldest son. Professional or commercial life was un- 
known. Military service was the only employment to which 
such men could look, and the only field in which such service 
was open to them was in being near the king. But in ceasing 
to be a landholder, the young noble ceased to be a freeman — ■ 
that is, ceased to have any place in the communities of free- 
men in his own right. Only through his fealty to the king did 
he retain any political relation to the kingdom. But this rela- 
tion to the king as coming thus into the place of every other, 
became on that account the stronger. These nobles by ser- 
vice had their home about the king's hearth ; their place at 
the king's board. In all his perils they were at his side. 
In all his successes they were in their measure sharers in 
the spoil. Nothing could exceed the chivalrous devotion 
of such men to the cause of their lord. No dishonour could 
be greater than that of having failed him in his hour of 
need. Poetry describes them as prepared to face, not only 
the natural, but the supernatural — the fiendish Grendal, 
and the deadly Firedrake — in defence of the leader to whom 
they were sworn. * When an assassin raised his arm against 
Edwin ofNortlmmbria, the thane Li 11a threw himself between 
the weapon and the king ; and such was the stroke, that 
the point reached the body of the monarch through that of 
his self-sacrificed noble, f We have seen also the feeling 
evinced in this respect by the retainers of Cynewulf and 
Cyncheard in the fray at Merton. 

In fact, this sense of honour came too much into the 
place of a passion for freedom. Nobles of this class learnt 
to content themselves with being excluded from the roll in 
the communities of freemen, so they could realize honour 
and wealth by placing themselves in this special relation to 
the king. It is obvious, that to the king such a force was 
always the nucleus of an army. Times might come in 
which the danger from this force to general liberty would 
be seen or suspected. But in such a state of society the 

* Beowulf, 1582 et seq. 5262 et seq. 
f Bede, Eccles. Hist. ii. 9. 

Vol. I.— 15 



22G SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. feeling of safety imparted by tins means would more than 

Ciiap. 8. J I 

outweigh such fear in the mind of the peaceful. It is 

beyond doubt, however, that the rising power of this class 
of nobles tended more and more to lower the influence of the 
nobility who derived their authority from birth and terri- 
tory, and to Lessen the Independence of the communities of 
freemen. The central became in many tilings too strong 
for the local. The civil was often made to give place to the 
military. So that even protection seemed to be purchased 
at too high a price. Of course the territorial nobles were at 
liberty to keep ap a comitatw, or ' following/ as it was called, 
according to their means, after the manner of the king; 

and among the more wealthy such was more or less the cus- 
tom. Thus Lands were Let on military tenure ; and even 
ecclesiastics had their military retainer-, as we see in the 
.it' archbishop < 'do. :: " 
Thefrmiiy In the Roman civilization, the feeling proper to family 
Baxoniegts- relationships, had been from the first almost superseded by 

lotion. ' 

maxims of Btate. Hence when the state became utterly cor- 
rupt, nothing remained but that society should fall to pieces. 
But with the Germanic race, the bonds of family and 
kindred were sacred, and were the basis of all other rela- 
tion-. The reverence for woman, the Banctity of the mar- 
riasre vow, the rigour with which men of the Bame Mood 
were bound to guard the interests of each other, and were 
made in their measure responsible for each other, were all 
parts of a system in which the family was regarded :i- the 

• From '' ■ -< comitas — military retainers — came the class of men known 
in Anglo-Saxon history, fit iths,' afterwards as thanes. When the 

retainer became a thane, it was required that he should be possessed of land. 
Tlir wergild of the thane was equal to that of six mere freemen, and his privi- 
in other respects were in the Bame proportion. The ealdorman must 
l ,.. ., .. forty hides of land, tin- thane live. In time, the simple posst jsion of 
that amount of land made any man a thane. In Wessex, a Welshman, so far 

ent, acquired that statu-; and a merchant who made three voyages be* 
yond sea in bis own vessel might claim the same rank. — Heywood's Dissert, on 
Ranks. Ellis, Tntrod. i. 145-163. Cod. Diplomat, i. 249. Kemble's Anglo- 
ns,i. e. 7. The thane was under military service, and bound to appear 
on horseback. It is certain, also, that Ids rank entitled him to he present, if 
60 disposed, at the Witanagemote. The term ' radchenistres ' occurs in dis- 
tricts bordering on Wale-, as the title of an inferior class of thanes who were 
probably Welsh. The term ' drenghs ' also, is mentioned by Lappenberg as 
of Danish origin and as descriptive of a similar class in the north of England. 
— Eng. ii. 



REVOLUTION EST GOVERNMENT. 227 

first form of society, and in which everything beyond was bo °k n. 

viewed as an expansion of what had been found there. The 

earlier Anglo-Saxon laws determine many things concern- 
ing the manner in which kindred should act as the protec- 
tors of kindred, and in which the one should be accounted 
responsible for the other. Subsequent laws, designed to 
limit such responsibility, and to remove cases from settle- 
ment by private violence to the local courts, show clearly 
what the earlier usage had been. * 

The Saxon institutions familiar to us under the name of The Tithing 

and Hun- 

Tithmgs and Hundreds were the natural result of this great dre(L 
feature in the complexion of Teutonic life. For the tithings 
and hundreds were not at first apportionments of territory 
— had that been the case they would have been equal. A 
tithing was the association of ten families, a hundred was the 
association of a hundred families, f The principle of the 
tithing was, that it bound each man of the ten to be in 
hi- measure responsible for the good conduct of the re- 
maining nine. In this view the tithing became another 
form of the family. The rights and duties of its members 
were in common. Should one of their number become an 
offender, it devolved on the nine ' to hold him to right.' 
Should he flee, at least thirty days were allowed the tithing 
to find him. If he could not be found, then the head-man 
of the tithing must call in the head-men, and ' some of the 

* Edw. Conf. xx. et seq. Thorpe. 

\ In the later times of the Saxon dynasty, the hundred appears to have con- 
sisted of a hundred hides of land, but this was a change which resulted naturally 
from the increase of population. The smaller counties have, many of them, the 
greatest number of hundreds. But these smaller counties were the earliest and 
the most thickly peopled by the conquerors. In Kent, the new comers were 
many. In Lancashire, where the hundreds are the fewest, being six only in 
number, the natives still upon the laud were numerous, and the strangers com- 
paratively few. — Ellis, Introd, i. 184 et Beq. 

Care must be taken not to confound the tithings with the ' guilds.' The tith- 
ings were political associations, originating in the laws, and sustained by the 
sanctions of the state. But the guilds were rather voluntary associations, the 
objects of which were various. They go hack in German history to the time 
when they were the sacrificial guilds of heathenism. Market days and court days 
were seasons of religious festival ; and the guilds which met at such times and 
places were partly religious, partly convivial, and partly of the nature of benefit 
or insurance clubs. Provision was thus made against losses of property, expenses 
of funerals, and such matters. Such associations were the origin of important 
municipal institutions, especially along the coasts of the Low Countries. In 
England, the guilds were not known in their pagan associations. — Turner, bk. 
vii. c. 10. Lapp. ii. 349-351. 



22S SAXONS AXD DANES. 

B <Oiap i 1 - best,' from the adjoining titliings, to the number of eleven, 

before whom, as jurors, the question to be decided would be, 

whether the tithing had done its best to bring the culprit to 
justice, and whether it had been itself in any way implicated 
in the offence. Should the tithing be acquitted, the head- 
man was required to produce the mulct, or fine proper to 
the offence, out of the property of the wrong-doer, or of his 
family, c so long as that shall Last ; ' and should that not be 
sufficient, the head-man and his tithing must furnish the 
remainder. In all cases the tithing is to see that recom- 
pence is made, or to make it.* So that the tithings of the 
kingdom were, in fact, its police; and, from the motives 
naturally supplied to vigilance, 1 1 m • \ furnished a police the 
most effective possible in such a Btate of society. 

Many differences requiring adjustment were Bettled in 
the tithing. Such as were of a nature not to be SO disposed 
of, passed to the court of the hundred, which met usually 

once a month. It' not Bettled there, it went to the shire- 
court, which met three times a year.f Of course the men 
reckoned, both in the tithings and in the hundreds, were 
restricted to freemen. Men of various degrees qo1 bo reck- 
oned, were connected in different ways with the court of 
some lord, who was at once their protector, and responsible 
for their conduct. \ 

Both the tithings and the hundred had something to do 
with the collecting and disbursement of rates, on many local 
matter-, beside affairs of police : and their meetings 

which took place tor these various purposes, were not 
always allowed to pass as meetings of mere business. One 
ancient document instructs the eleven men representing the 

tithings of a hundred in London to hold meeting.- a.- nearly 

* Lares of Ethelred, i. 1. Laws of Edgar, ii. »'>. Canute, s xx. Edw. 
Conf. xv. xx. ./"</. Civit. Lond. \iii. 7. Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, i. c. 9. 
'The freeman's original position in the state was that of one of a family whose 
members were bound to mutual aid against violence. 1 — Lapp. ii. 33(5. But the 
An^lo-Saxon tithing extended their principle beyond cases of unlawful violence, 
to any matter which 'compromised the public weal, or trenched upon the rights 
or well-being of others.' — Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, i. 251. 

f In tli<> court of the hundred the ealdorman was expected to preside, as- 
! by tli'' l'i-hop, and the principal thanes of the neighbourhood. — Laws of 
Edgar, ii. ">. Canute, xviii. 

\ Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, i. c 9. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 229 

as mio-lit be once a month, and directs that they should at book ii. 

& J Chap. 8. 

such times ' have their refection together, and feed them- 

selves as they think fit, and deal the remains of the meat for 
the love of God. ' * Such seasons of good fellowship did 
much no doubt to sweeten the labors of trusty burghers in 
those days. 

We have spoken of the right which Teutonic law and 
usage supposed to belong to the persons of a family which 
has suffered wrong, to exact a recompence from the persons 
of the family from which the wrong has proceeded. Tacitus 
says of the Germans : ' They are bound to take up both the 
enmities and the friendships of a father or relative.' He 
adds : ' Their enmities, however, are not implacable ; for 
even homicide is atoned for by a settled number of flocks or 
herds. A portion of the fine goes to the king or state, a 
part to him whose damages are to be assessed, or to his 
relatives.' f 

In Anglo-Saxon law the fine so imposed bears the name r ^ wer * 
of t wergyld.' The wergild was graduated according to 
the wrong done, and according to the rank of the person 
against whom it had been perpetrated. It applied to 
wrongs of all kinds, and it determined the value attached to 
every man's oath, according to his condition, in a court 
of justice. The settlement of the wergild by law was a 
material step towards putting an end to private feuds, and 
to the mischiefs inseparable from them. One of Alfred's 
laws denounces a heavy penalty against the man who 
should presume to seek redress by his own hands, in place 
of seeking it through the authorities bound to secure it for 
him. But in Anglo-Saxon history, custom in this respect 
was often found to be stronger than the law. % 

In the tithing we have seen .the first step in political Tho witan- 
organization among the Saxons in England. Next came the 
organization of the hundreds. ISText that of the shires. 
But beyond the meeting of the shire, was the meeting sup- 
posed to represent all the shires, and convened specially 
by the king. This assembly bore the name of the Witanage- 

* Jvdicia Civitatis Lond. Athelstan, v. 8, § 1. Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, 
i. 242. 

f Gcrmania, xii. xxii. \ Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, bk. i. c. 10. 



230 



SAXONS AND DAITE8. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 8. 



Its consti 
tution. 



mote. It was the great council, or parliament, of the state. 
Two questions arise concerning it : How was it constituted £ 
What was its business i 

It is clear that the constitution of the Witanagemote was 
not upon principles of representation defined and determined 
in the manner with which we are ourselves familiar. The 
tithings, the hundreds, the shires, might all elect their own 
officers to preside over their own local affairs : but we have 
no trace of evidence to show that it was the work of the 
Saxon freemen, or of any part of them, to choose the mem- 
bers of the Witanagemote. Athelstan, on the contrary, 
describes the assemblies of that nature convened at out 
different places, as consisting of persons 'whom the king 
himself had named.* This was no doubt the cas 
regarded all the principal persons convened, and such we 
ha\ o reason to suppose was the usage. Parties not so 'united 
were probably allowed, in Borne instances, to be present, to 
furnish information on particular questions, and even to 
take part in the proceedings; and, generally, there would 
Seem t" have been gatherings of freemen who were the 
witnesses of the proceedings, and who, if pleased with them, 
were expected to testify their approval. 

Still, the men constituting the Witanagemote were to 
some extent from all parts of the kingdom ; and in so far, 
the kingdom may he said to have been represented by them. 
The meeting, moreover, included men of all ranks — the 
noble of every grade, and men who cannot he supposed to 
have risen above the rank of ordinary freemen.*]' On the 

* Codex Dipl. i. 240. 

+■ lien- is the preamble to the laws enacted under W&troed, king of Kent, in 
696. ' Wihtroed assembled a deliberative convention of the great men: there 
was Birtwald, archbishop of Britain, ami the forenamed king, also the bishop of 
Rochester, the Bame was called Gybmnnd, was presenl ; ami every decree of the 
church of thai province spoke in unison with tin: obedient people. Then the 
great men decreed, with the suffrages of all, these dooms, and added them to 
the lawful customs of the Kentish men, as it hereafter saith ami declareth.' — 
And* nt /.uir* mid Institutions <>/' England, 16, 17. The following passage pre- 
cedes the laws of Ina : ' Ina, by < rod's grace, long of the West Saxons, with the 
counsel and the teaching of Cenred, my father, and of Hedde, my bishop, and of 
Eorcenwold my bishop, with all my ' caldormcn, y and the most distinguished 
' Witon* of my people, and also with a larr/e assembly of Gad's servants, have 
been considering of the health of our souls, and of the stability of our realm, so 
that just law and just kingly doom might be settled ami established throughout 
our folk ; so that none of the ealdormen, nor of our subjects, should hereafter 
pervert these our dooms.' — Ibid. 4o. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 231 

•whole, the "Witanagemote would seem to have been as good book ii. 

an assembly for its purpose as could well have been brought 

together in such circumstances. In those days, the com- 
moners were few who would have coveted a summons to 
traverse the half of England to be present at such a consul- 
tation. The rivers he would have to cross, the forests he 
would need to thread, the marshes to be compassed, the 
miserable roads, the worse accommodation — all would com- 
bine to render it necessary that the good man should see 
such advantages attendant on his presence in the great 
council as no such man ever did see, if his patriotism was 
to prove sufficiently elastic to carry him to the end of his 
journey. If historians and speculators would only imagine 
themselves out of the present and in the past a little more 
frequently and vividly, it would suffice to save them from 
much error. Mainly from the cause adverted to — the great 
difficulty of locomotion — the maximum of the leading men 
present in the "Witanagemote was rarely more than a hun- 
dred, including bishops, with other ecclesiastical dignitaries, 
the different classes of nobles, and persons holding subor- 
dinate civil or military offices. * 

Concerning the business of this assembly, it is clear that Its busmoss 
its voice was to be taken in regard to all acts that should be 
authorized by the king ; that it possessed the power to de- 
termine who should succeed to the throne on the demise of 
a king ; that it could depose a sovereign whose rule was 
not for the benefit of his subjects ; that it took part with 
the king in negotiations with an enemy, and in settling 
terms of peace ; that conjointly with the crown it had power 
to appoint prelates to vacant sees, to change the tenure of 
lands, to levy taxes for the public service, and to raise forces 
by sea or by land ; that it acted as a supreme court of jus- 
tice, in cases civil and criminal ; and that it could adjudge 

* The names of the Witan attached to documents are not often more than 
thirty ; the highest known number is one hundred and six. Dr. Lingard says 
(Hist. i. 186,) ' they never amounted to sixty,' but this is a mistake. — See Kem- 
ble, bk. ii. c. 6. It does not follow, however, because the names in these in- 
stances were so few that no more persons were present. Such signatures are 
rare4y given until the meeting itself has been dissolved, and then such as remain 
sign on the part of the whole. Among the names which appear wc sometimes 
find those of the queen and of abbesses. 



232 



BASONS AND DANES. 



BOOK IL 
Chap. S. 

Relation of 
the Witaii- 
ngemote 
to the 
shires and 
the people. 



Different 
holdings of 
land. 



the lands of offenders and intestates as forfeited to the 
king. * 

It is material to observe, that it appears to have been a 
usage, that the results of the meeting of the "Witan should 
be taken by the officers of the town present into the different 
shires, and that the pledge of the shire court, including its 
nobles and its ordinary freemen, should be obtained in sup- 
port of what had been done. In one parliament under 
Athelstan, sheriffs from all the counties of England are said 
to have been present, and in the usage mentioned we pro- 
bably have the reason of their so being. + This was one 
method by which the difficulty was met of bringing mem- 
bers together from great distances for civil purposes in those 
times. ' The whole principle of Teutonic legislation,' says 
Mr. Kemble, ' is, and always was, that the law is made by 
the constintion of the king, and with the consent of the peo- 
ple.':^ And in the custom of obtaining a pledge from the 
freemen of the provinces in support of what the king and 
lii- greal council had done, thifl principle was recognised in 

the manner found to be most available. Ofcour.se. what the 
Witanagemote had done was done. The shiremote had no 
power to annul or amend. But it had its occasions for con- 
ference, and for the expression of opinion ; and the fact that 
the conclusions of the AVitanagemote would be thus sub- 
mitted to the shires in their respective courts, would not he 
without its effect on the proceedings of that body. § 

When the Saxons possessed themselves of this country, 
they seized its territory as their own. The largest share 
fell to the king. The remainder was distributed among 
the chiefs who had followed his standard. These chiefs 
made further distributions into the hands of two classes of 
freemen — those who occupied the land as bocland, or 
bookland, which made it a kind of chartered freehold ; and 
those who occupied it as folcland (the people's land), which 
was much the same with a lease and renthold. Those who 
occupied folcland, as being tenants rather than owners, were 

* The evidence on these points lies over a wide surface — the substance of it 
may be seen in Mr. Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, ii. 204-232, 241-261. 
\ Leg. Athels. v. 10. 
\ Anglo-Saxons, ii. 230. § Ibid. ii. c. 6. 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 233 

subject to a variety of burdens from which the occupiers of book ii. 

bocland were exempt. But the ' people's land ' was not 

always in the hands of a humble tenantry. Thanes and 
nobles were often its holders, on the prescribed conditions. 
Domesday Book shows that at the Conquest nearly half the 
kingdom of Kent was crown land, and that the remainder 
was in the hands of eleven persons, by whom, as tenants in 
chief, it passed, on various conditions, to the hands of a 
numerous secondary tenantry. * 

. Eise of 

In the midst of these holders and cultivators of the land, towns. 
towns gradually made their appearance ; and the artisan 
population of the towns has now to be dealt with, in the 
way of legislation and government, along with the agricul- 
tural population of the province. And it would be agreeable 
to know much more than we can now know in relation both 
to the origin and constitution of towns among the Anglo- 
Saxons. 

"We have seen in what condition the Britons were left 
by the Romans. The natives were incapable of making a 
wise use of the Roman cities. The Picts and Scots, and the 
Saxons after them, were not disposed to seek their homes in 
such places. The Scots were soon driven back to their fast- 
nesses. The Saxons looked to the land and to their swords. 
In the meanwhile, neglect and the elements sufficed to re- 
duce not a few of the most costly works of the Romans to 
ruins. In this climate, the falling rains of winter and the 
progress of vegetation in summer, if left to themselves soon 
do the work of the destroyer. Exposure to such influences 
or even less than a century, would suffice to reduce the 
ordinary buildings to heaps, and the strongest to roofless 
fragments. So that by the time the Saxons became settled 
and industrious enough to think of constructing walled 
cities, those who had once existed were so far gone to decay 
as to be of small service. In many instances the new town 
arose on the old site. Local advantages would often be to 
the new settler what they had been to the old. But in all 
the notices we have of early Anglo-Saxon buildings the 
workmen seem not so much to be availing themselves of 

* Lapp. ii. 323-326. Lingard, i. 461, 462. 



234 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



The Boson 

burgh. 



book ii. old edifices as raisins: new. and to be constructing them 

Chap. 8. ° ' ° 

even of new material. Subsequently, no doubt, the Roman 

remains contributed to the education of the native workman. 
The Anglo-Saxon architecture in stone is everywhere a 
rude imitation of the Roman ; but the earliest specimens In 
that architecture, as already mentioned, were of wood, with a 
covering of reeds. Hence the life led by king and bishop 
appears to have long been, for the most part, an ambulatory 
life. Places of sufficient importance to fix the residence 
of the one or the other can scarcely be said to have been in 
existence. 

The Ji>i,'<ih, <>r fortress, raised by the Saxon noble, bore 
small resemblance to the Norman castle, or the strong city of 
a later age. An elevated ground, defended by a dyke and a 
framework of wood, which as a piece of fortification was 
little in advance of an Indian stockade, sufficed for a while 
to constitute a place of Bafety. But within that enclosure 
there were Stout hearts, and the Btrong arm. Around that 
fenced dwelling-place, the cultivators of the soil, and the 
few men who worked at handicraft, found lodgment. These 
men were always ready to supply the wants of the fight- 
ing men ot'ten resorting thither, and to extend their infant 
traffic to the adjacent country. So beneath the home of 
the lord rose a village, and by degrees the village became 

a town. What the residence of a noble was in this respect 
at one point, the residence of a bishop, or some abbot and 
his monks, would be at another— a nucleus to organizations 

destined to affed remote generations. The workers on the 

soil, or at the loom, clustered about the centre from which 
they might hope for protection ; and it was the interest of 
the strong to protect the weak, for other reasons than that 
the weak were willing to pay them tribute for Mich service. 
History shows that in this manner many an Anglo-Saxon 
town had its beginnings. The 'burgh,' 'bury,' and 'borough,' 
found as terminations in the names of so many of our 
towns, point to this phase of our early history. In such 
places the strong man once had his dwelling, and there the 
weak sought shelter and safety, and in process of time found 
something more. As a supply of the useful became more 
abundant, it created a taste for the luxurious ; and in the 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 235 

history of the luxurious, the possession of the better never book il 

fails to excite a desire for the better still. Our great cities 

are all the creations, not of court pageants, so much as 6f 

a prosperous trade. 

As these natural gatherings became towns, enclosed within Govern- 
ed o ' ment in 

walls and gates, it may be said of them that they all became town s. 
more or less self-governed communities. The degree in which 
they possessed this power would be determined by the power 
or policy of the lord, the bishop, or the abbot to whom they 
were subject. In general, they levied their own rates, had their 
own common purse, and chose, in whole or in part, their own 
officers. In all cases the burghers were bound to each other by 
' oath or pledge ; ' and formed confederations which, as we 
enter further into the Middle Age, become a power strong 
enough to check both nobles and kings in their march of op- 
pression. In some instances a city became so free as to be in- 
dependent of any local authority beyond itself — being, accord- 
ing to our language, a county in itself. The rights of such 
a corporation were, in fact, kingly rights. ' Such a free or- 
ganization was capable of placing a city upon terms of 
equality with other constituted powers ; and hence we can 
easily understand the position so frequently assumed by 
the inhabitants of London. As late as the tenth century, 
and under Athelstan, a prince who had carried the influence 
of the crown to an extent unexampled in any of his predeces- 
sors, we rind the burghers treated as power to power with 
the king, under their port-reeves and bishops ; engaging, 
indeed, to follow his advice, if he have any to give which 
shall be to their advantage ; but nevertheless, constituting 
their own guildships or commune, by their own authority, 
and a basis of mutual alliance and guarantee, as to them- 
selves seemed good.'* If London could take such ground, 
and if in dealing with weaker princes it could proceed even 
further, the lesser cities would not be wholly unmindful of 
her example. But we read of no such strifes between the 
burghers and their lords in Anglo-Saxon Britain as are 
found in the history of the Continental cities, and in our own 
after the Conquest. The presumption is, that though many 

* Kemble, Anglo-Saxons, i. 310, 311. 



236 



SAXOXS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 8. 



Fosition of 
tho kins. 



lords were no doubt prone enough to play the tyrant, on 
the whole, the liberty ceded to the Anglo-Saxon burghers 
was considerable. Suffering in the towns, we have reason 
to think, resulted mainly from the great numbers of the not 
free and not protected who crowded into them.* 

Such, in general, became the condition of the subjects of 
the crown in Anglo-Saxon Britain. The royalties, or per- 
sonal rights of the sovereign, were various. His life and 
person were protected by the heaviest penalties known to 
the law. He had the use of large territories, corresponding 
to our "Woods and Forests, which passed with the crown to 
hi- successor. The holder of this property was the king; 
its guardianship was with the Witanagemote. Besides his 
revenue from this source, the monarch received, after the 
German custom, voluntary contributions, in kind or other- 
wise, from the freemen; contributions which, from being 
voluntary, became a custom, and becoming a custom, were 
too often interpreted as taking with them the force of 
law, and as implying the right of exaction. Of the fines 
and confiscations for offences a part went t.> the king. It 

belonged to him to maintain a military force, which, though 
necessarily limited by his means, partook of the nature of 
a standing army. It was with the king to convene the 
Witanagemote. But he had not the power to dispense with 
its meetings, nor was it to be dissolved at his pleasure. In 
this tact we trace the presence of a gnat principle of 
liberty, favourable alike to the freedom of the subject and 
to the safety of the throne. The king, as the conservator 
of the public peace, could summon the militia to suppress 
disorder, or to meet an invader. The coinage was in his 
charge. He was, moreover, the fountain of justice, inasmuch 
as to his court appeals might be made from all other courts ; 
and the fountain of honour also, inasmuch as he could raise 
his servants, civil or military, to new positions of rank and 
title.f 

* The Domesday Book makes frequent mention of what had been the old 
usage of the Anglo-Saxon towns and cities, and leaves those customs undis- 
turbed. — Introduction by Sir Henrv Ellis, lxi.-lxvii. All the boroughs had to 
make their contributions to the king in men, horses, arms, and money payments. 
But the nature of the contributions varied somewhat with locality. 

f Kemble, ii. c. 2. The German estimate of the female character is evinced 



REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 237 

These prerogatives, and some others, formed a large field ^ok il 
for the exercise of the kingly power. The exact limits Th ~j~. s 
within which such royalties would be kept, depended much k™sehoid. 
on the character and circumstances of the sovereign. ISTor 
did the royal influence terminate in such privileges. As 
the monarchy became consolidated, the court and the house- 
hold were constituted of men who, while themselves often 
of high rank, had learned to value such relations to the 
king as opening to them new sources of wealth and power. 
The chamberlain, who had the care of the household ; the 
marshal, who possessed the command of the cavalry ; the 
steward, who took charge of the royal table ; the butler, 
who acted as the king's cupbearer ; the clergy, who were 
there to discharge their spiritual functions — all these, while 
deriving much from their connexion with the king, in their 
turn, reflected lustre on his court, and added weight to his 
influence and authority. * 

In the administration of justice among the Anglo-Saxons ^™j° '£j 
we find principles which may be traced in our later usages, |^^J" 
and others which have been superseded by our more ad- £0™^^- 
vanced civilization. The finding of a verdict in the Hun- tors - 
dred Court, and in all other courts, was the province of 
twelve thanes or free tenants, or it might be that the judg- 
ment would be with twice or thrice that number, accord- 
ing to the nature of the case. The voice of two thirds 
gave a sufficient verdict. When the evidence was not such 
as to warrant a judgment, the decision taken was on the 
ground of compurgation — that is, according to the oaths of 
persons expressing their belief in the veracity of the decla- 
rations made by the accuser or the accused. In this deci- 
sion by oath, every compurgator's oath was of weight ac- 
cording to his social position as determined by his wergild. 

in the place assigned to the Anglo-Saxon queen. She Tvas consecrated and 
crowned with her husband, or separately if the king married after he had become 
king. Other provisions of Saxon law in relation to the queen were in accordance 
with this usage. The exception to this custom in Wessex, in consequence of the 
crimes of Eadburga, was merely exceptional, and after a time, even there, the 
ancient usage was restored. — Lapp. ii. 310. Ellis, Introd. i. 171. Heywood on 
Ranks. 

* Palgrave's English Commonwealth, ii. 345. Philipps, Angelsachs, § 23. 
Lapp. ii. 311, 312. 



238 SAXONS AXD DANES. 

^n^p s L In some cases the number of compurgators required to ensure 
an acquittal was fixed by law, often the numbers proffer- 
ing their attestations greatly exceeding that limit. It some- 
times happened that, after Loth investigation and compur- 
gation, the court would be perplexed. In such instance- it 
Ma> not unusual, in civil cases, for twelve or more thane-, 
chosen equally by the litigants, to retire from the court 
that they might deliberate upon their verdict. In criminal 
cases, the course of proceeding was in nearly all respects 
the same, except that trial by ordeal was then open to the 
accused, in place of trial by compurgation, Bhould lie be 
disposed to take that alternative. Our trial by jury grew 
out <»f such usages, but in several respects it is something 
different and better.* 
ordcai by ^ n tr ' :l ^ D y ordeal the culprit was enjoined to give him- 

to fasting and prayer for three days. < m the last day he 
Lved the sacrament, and was admonished not to proceed 

unless conscious of hi- innocence. The place ,<\ trial was a 

church. The only persons present were the accuser, the accus- 
ed, and twelve friends on either Bide a.- witnesses of the pro- 
ling. The parties si 1 in lines opposite each other, as the, 

litany wa- read, [f the trial Was by water, a vessel was placed 
on a lire in the midst, and it wa- -e in that the water boiled. 

The accused then thrust his hand into the vessel : the priest 

immediately wound a cloth over the scald, and placed a seal 
upon it. which was to remain unbroken for three days. If the 
trial was by lire, the alleged culprit seized a bar of hot 
iron, and bore it to the distance of three steps. The cloth 
was then placed about the hand in the same manner. 
At the expiration of three days the -eal was broken, and if 

the hand was found to be healed, the party was acquitted ; 
if not, he wa- condemned. As there were many cases in 
which the healing was declared to have taken place, it is 
difficult to suppose that the clergy were wholly guiltless 
in the part they took in these proceedings. The probability 
hat the guilty who committed themselves to such an 

* Hist. Ram. 415, 416. Regist. Roff. 32. Hid. Eliens. 479. Zams ,,/ 
Etkelred, iii. 3. Leg. Sax. 262. Palgrave's Commonwealth, i. 100, 216. Lap- 
penberg, ii. 344-346. 



REVOLUTION EST GOVERNMENT. 239 

experiment, did so from some collusion with the priest : B00K Ir - 

tit- • n -, i ClIAP - & 

and that the innocent were influenced by an excessive ere- ■ 

dulity as to the power of the priesthood. The experiment, 

however, was very rarely attempted ; and its design, 

whether in its pagan or in its Christian connexion, was to 

bring the guilty to confession by means adapted to affect 

the imgination and the conscience.* 

Such was the change in respect to government which Summary 
ii/> i /.i« -.^ orthe Revo- 

resulted trom the conquests of the feaxons and Danes motion in 

. , o i i Govern- 

Britain. The rover finds a settled dwelling-place. The ment - 
man who had lived by plunder puts his hand to honest in- 
dustry. The culture of the soil is followed by the construc- 
tion of the village and the town. The men who find their 
home in the new country became concerned for the safety 
of their newly acquired substance, and of their persons. 

* Leg. Sa.r. 26, 27, et seq. Trial by single combat was not unknown among 
the ancient Germans. Grimm (D. R. A. 927 et seq.) is cited by Lappenbcrg 
(ii. 347) as giving examples. Edmund Ironside's challenge to Canute is a fact 
which seems to recognise such a custom in our history. Our trial by jury is, as 
commonly supposed, of Anglo-Saxon origin. But the number twelve was often 
fixed on by our ancestors in their judicial process. The function of jurors, 
moreover, in those days, differed materially from that now assigned to them. 
'Trial by jury, according to the old English law, was a proceeding essentially 
different from the modern tribunal still bearing the ancient name, by which it has 
been replaced ; and whatever merits belong to the original mode of judicial in- 
vestigation — and they were great and unquestionable, though accompanied by 
many imperfections — such benefits are not to be exactly identified with the ad- 
vantages now resulting from the great bulwark of English liberty. Jurymen of 
the present day are the triers of the issue ; they are individuals who found their 
opinion upon evidence, whether oral or written, adduced before them ; and the 
verdict delivered by them is their declaration of the judgment they have formed. 
But the ancient jurymen were not empannelled to examine into the credibility of 
the evidence — the question was not discussed and argued before them : they, the 
jurymen, were the witnesses themselves; and the verdict was substantially the 
examination of these witnesses, who, of their own knowledge, and without the 
aid of other testimony, afforded their evidence respecting the facts in question 
to the best of their belief. In its primitive form, therefore, a trial by jury was 
only a trial by witnesses ; and jurymen were distinguished from other witnesses 
only by the customs which imposed upon them the obligation of an oath, and 
regulated their number, and which prescribed their rank and defined the territo- 
rial qualifications from which they obtained their degree and influence in soci- 
ety.' — Palgrave's English Commonwealth, i. 243, 244. 

Perhaps the difference between the trial by compurgators and our trial by 
jury is a little overstated in the above passage. The oath of the compurgators 
was valued as being that of men from the neighbourhood who were likely to 
know the character of the accused, and to know the circumstances of the case, 
not merely by common rumour, but by means more definite and certain. When 
they were agreed in saying not guilty, the sentence of the magistrate would 
scarcely be at issue with that decision. Their words were virtually, though not 
formally, an acquittal. It was, however, a material advance when the evidence 
came to be adduced in court, and the decision of guilty or not guilty was made 
to rest with the jury, and not with the judge. 



240 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



B c ? h°ap. a The ' oath and pledge ' which had bound them as freeboot- 
ers now binds them as men engaged in better occupations, 
and disposed to exchange government by the sword for 
government by the law. Tithings and hundreds and shire- 
courts weave them all into a great social network which 
covers the land. Every man enters into a security for the 
good conduct of the men nearest about him and acts con- 
tinually from the nature of the case as an officer of police — 
and as an officer whose motives to vigilance supersede the 
necessity of pay. Such as were not responsible to the court 
of the hundred were responsible to the hall-court of their 
lord. All localities have their local governments, and each 
locality has its refuge against injustice from within itself in 
its right of appeal to the sense of justice beyond and above 
itself. For the tithings, the hundreds, the hall-mote, the 
shires, the king's-court, the Hng himself — none of these are 
absolute. The lasl resorl lies with the wisdom of the great 
council of the nation conjoined with the king. Bytheweak 
and necessitous Buch ultimate appeal.- would rarely be 
made. Bu1 the right was open to such cases and persons 
as might reasonably claim a hearing in that high quarter. 
Such is the polity which, in new circumstances, grew out of 
those Bimple principles of government which had been com- 
mon to the Germanic race from the earliest time, and which 
were to be further developed through the storm and labour 
of centuries in English history. The not free among the 
Anglo-Saxons were as we have seen either slaves or persons 
under the protection of particular lords. Among these 
some were rich, many were need \ ; and the benevolence of 
our ancestors assigned a fourth of the revenue of the 
clergy, from all sources, to the special benefit of the poor.* 
, In judging of the revolution involved in the settled gov- 
ernment of the Anglo-Saxons, the reader has to view that 
government in two relations — in its relation to the disorders 
which it superseded in the case of the Romanized Britons ; 
and in its relation to the rude organizations of the Saxon 
hordes who migrated to our shores in the fifth and sixth 
centuries. 

* Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, bk. ii. c. 11. 



CHAPTER IX. 

REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LITE IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. 



w 



AR is the s;reat feature in Ano-lo-Saxon history. But book ii. 

... Chap. 9. 

even in these circumstances the industrious habits — — ' 

t* i -i • mi /» i i • Industrial 

oi the people arc conspicuous. Ihe names ot our old mi- life in 

An°"lo- 

plements of husbandry are nearly all of Saxon origin, snxon Bri- 
Some knowledge of this science the settlers may have culture. 
acquired from the Romanized Britons. But they had not 
been wholly strangers to such occupations in the countries 
from whence they came. To till the ground, indeed, had 
never been the work of their free men. It had been left to 
women and slaves. Nor did the agriculture of this island 
ever become, in the hands of the Saxons, what it had been 
under the Romans. But its progress, though unequal, 
was continuous and considerable, down to the Conquest. 

Much time was given by the Anglo-Saxons to the rearing 
of cattle and swine. The large pasture, and the extensive 
forest lands, at their disposal, were favourable to such pur- 
suits. Even the villeins, or peasants, were encouraged to 
become herdsmen on a small scale. The goat gave them 
milk and fleece. The skins of their herds gave them leather 
for shoes, breeches, and gloves — the latter being generally 
worn, even by the humblest. "Wool was an article of ex- 
portation, and was returned by the artisans of the Nether- 
lands and of the Rhine provinces in the form of woollen 
cloths. Honey was much valued ; and the bee-master was 
a person almost as well-known as the swineherd. Great 
care was bestowed on the breeding of horses ; and laws 
were enacted to ensure attention to that object. Hence the 
readiness with which the Danish invaders mustered their cav- 
Vol. I.— 16 



242 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 9. 



Draining 
and em- 
bankments. 



airy. We do not find that corn was ever imported into 
Saxon Britain, nor docs the country appear to have suffered 
so much as most countries in those times from dearth, though 
mention is made of seasons in which the suffering from this 
cause was great. The grain raised consisted of wheat, 
barley, rye, and oats : the latter were grown in great quan- 
tities, and appear to have been used as food by the people, 
much as in Scotland. The rent of land was generally paid 
in produce, it was rarely a money payment.* 

Among the good works of the Anglo-Saxon husbandmen, 
we must reckon their experiments in draining and embank- 
ments. Large tracts of marsh land were thus reclaimed, 
especially in the eastern counties. Garden culture was 
common, and not less so the culture of the vine. Beer, ale, 
and wine from the grape, were the common beverage. The 
citizens of London, who strolled on summer holidays from 
Barbican across Smithfield, or from Ludgate over Ilolborn 
Hill, did so amidst meadow.-, gardens, and vineyards. Every 
monastery had its vineyard. Gloucestershire was especially 
famous for its grapes. The wine so produced had its place 
on the king's table. In the better sort, the acidity, we may 
suppose, was subdued by artificial means. f 

The Romans amassed large wealth from the mines of 
Britain. But the Britons did not prosecute the labours so 
commenced, and soon lost the knowledge so acquired. Even 
the tin mines of Cornwall seem to have been neglected for 
many centuries after the departure of the Romans. But 
the Saxons obtained lead in Derbyshire, and iron in abun- 
dance from many quarters, particularly from Somersetshire, 
Monmouthshire, and Herefordshire. William of Poitiers 
speaks of the universal wealth of Britain as greatly exceed- 
ing that of France, and, strange to say, describes the island 
as another Arabia from the abundance of its gold. Salt 
was a great article of frame among the Anglo-Saxons. The 
chief salt works were in Sussex and Cheshire. In the 
former county they numbered nearly four hundred such 

* Guil. Pictav. 210. Laics of Inn, xliv. ct scq. and of Athelstan. Liber 
Niger Scaccarii, lib. i c. 1. Hist. Eliens. i. 52. Lappenberg, ii. 356 et seq, 

•f Malms, de Pont. lib. iv. Hist. Miens, apud Gale. ii. 2. Ellis, Introd. i. 
106, 203. Rymer, i. 17. 



"REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 243 

works at the time of the Conquest. Wales was supplied book ii. 

for the most part from the pits in Cheshire.* ■ 

The men who lived by trade or handicraft were few, ^ d n fr"f4 
compared with those who were otherwise employed. Houses, trade - 
furniture, utensils, clothing, personal ornaments, all these 
suppose considerable industry and skill in the ' mysteries, 
which gave existence to such productions. Most of these, 
we may be assured, were by native artists, though foreign 
workmen were introduced by ecclesiastics and kings, from 
time to time, who became the educators of native talent. 
Cathedrals and royal residences came by degrees to be built 
of stone ; but the houses of the Anglo-Saxons, even of 
their great men, continued to be constructed, for the most 
part, of wood and other perishable material, f Stamford is 
mentioned as the place where a company of cloth weavers 
followed their vocation. £ In the working of embroidery, 
presenting a rich display of colours and gold, the Anglo- 
Saxons, and especially the females, so far excelled, that 
productions of this nature became known in most of the 
capitals of Europe under the name of ' English "Work. ' § 
So early as the eighth century we find an English merchant 
named Bolto resident at Marseilles, the said merchant being 
the father of a bishop. || Such men, we have reason to 
believe, were known in all the great marts of the Continent. 
One of the laws of Edward the Elder raised the merchant 
who had made three voyages in his own ship to the rank of 
a thane.^f Charlemagne, as we have seen, sent to Offa, king 
of Mercia, the complaint of certain French merchants con- 
cerning their woollen articles exported from England as 
being unfairly diminished in size.** London was known as 
the great meeting-place of foreign traders. French, Normans, 
Flemings, ' men of the Emperor,' that is, men from the 
rising Hanse towns of Germany — all might be seen in their 

* Guil. Pictav. 107. Domesday, i. 2G8. Ellis, i. 132. Lappenberg, ii. 
363-364. 

f Bede, Hist. Abb. 195. Eddius, Vita Wilf. c. 16, 17, 22. Asser, Vita 
Alf. 20. Malms, de Bey. lib. 2, 3. Ingulph. 

t Domesday, i. 336. § Muratori, Antiq. v. 12. Guil. Pictav. 211. 

I Lappenberg, ii. S64. 

^f Ancient Laws and Institutions of England, 81. 

** Epist. Caroli ad Offam, Wilkins, i. 159. 



244 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Ciiap. 0. 



The Intel- 
lectual lift 
of the 

Anglo- 



foreign costume, and heard in their foreign tongue, as they 
exposed their commodities for sale on the land at Billings- 
gate, or in their vessels upon the Thames. As it was in 
tli is respect in London, so was it in a measure in all the 
chief seaports. Bristol, even then, was a place of much 
traffic* Its merchants wire in constant intercourse with 
Ireland, where they carried on a trade in slaves, f But these 
different kinds of traffic were conducted for the most part 
in the way of barter. Some of the bolder Anglo-Saxon 
seamen engaged in the whale fishery, and extended their 
voyages to Iceland.^ 

So did the industrial and commercial genius of the 
Saxon race in Britain begin to develop itself. The sea-king 
thus gave himself to the service which was to transform him 
into the merchant-king. In this new form of the spirit of 
adventure we see the germ of the power which has since 
given a people to half the continent of America, and has Bel 
up its sovereignty over the fairest portion of Africa and 
India. The impulse is still the impulse of race — resolute, 
enduring, indomitable. When the home of the Saxon was 

changed, his vocation and tastes changed ; but this change 

has been simply the finding of a new outlet for the old ten- 
dency towards action and adventure, and the old passion 
for dominion. 

The intellectual life of the Anglo-Saxon-, in our sense 

of that expression, begins with their conversion to Chris- 
tianity. The bard, combining skill in poetry and music, 
has his place in nearly all rude nations. AW have Borne 
knowledge of the lyric poetry of the pagan Northmen ; 
but we know nothing of this embryo literature as it may 
have existed among the pagan Saxons. Many attempts have 
keen made to interpret the old Runic characters of the 
Scandinavians ; but the results of such labour are of smart 
vame.§ 

* Lappenberg, ii. 315. 

•J- Anglia Sacra, ii. Vita 8. Wttlstani. 

j Lappenberg, ii. 364. There are many laws which show that the internal 
trade of Saxon Britain was considerable, and subject to many cautious regula- 
tions. — Ibid, ii. 856, l>56. 

§ Palgrave'a History of the Anglo-Saxons, c. vii. 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL, LIFE. 245 

"We scarcely need say, that with the Anglo-Saxons the b c ° u °k "• 
capacity to read and write continued to the last to be Mu 7J7^ d 
almost exclusively the accomplishment of the clergy. Even P° etr y- 
kings were not expected to attach their names to docu- 
ments, but to ' sign ' with a cross. But it was the manner 
of our ancestors to learn their poetry, and especially their 
ballad and glee poetry, by heart ; and in this way they often 
possessed themselves of the contents of books while desti- 
tute of books. Of music they were passionately fond ; 
and it was their custom in their social gatherings to sing 
in parts, combining the harmony of verse with the harmony 
of sound. The word ' glee ' is of Saxon origin, and has 
descended to us from times when our countrymen who 
could not read verse, found delight in singing it. Alfred 
records in his Hand-hoc that Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, 
to secure the attention of his rude neighbours, was wont to 
stand on a bridge and sing his religious instruction to them 
in the form of ballads.* 

But the poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, even in their Chris- 
tain state, never rose to a level to be interesting to modern 
readers, except as belonging to the curious in the histonj 
of literature. The best known among this class of composi- 
tions, is the narrative poem by Cedmon, and the poems on 
Beowulf and Judith. The compositions of these authors have 
something of an epic purpose in them. Aldhelm, Alcuin, and 
other men of their order, also wrote poetry ; but they wrote 
in Latin, not in the vernacular tongue. Cedmon is much prais- 
ed by Bede. His narrative embraces the fall of the angels, the 
creation, the entrance of sin, and the victory achieved over 
Satan. It treats of Paradise as lost and as regained. The con- 
ception is so far Miltonic, but we cannot speak of the execution 
as being of that order. The author of Beowulf is not known. 
The work is attributed to the tenth century. It is a his- 
torical romance, with a good deal of the old saga or heathen 
element in it. Bothgar, a king, finds many of his faithful 
thanes cut oif by the secret agency of Grendal, one of the 

* Ibid. Turner's Anglo-Saxons, bk ix. c. 1. We may judge of the pleas- 
ure which the Anglo-Saxons felt in glee singing from the fact that many canons 
of the church forbid the clergy being parties to such amusements. — Ancient Laws 
and Institutions, 400, 401, 418. 



24G SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. "bad deities of the Saxon mythology. Beowulf, a young 

warrior from a distant land, undertakes to destroy Grendal, 

and through some difficulty and danger, at length succeeds. 
In the development of this story descriptions are given of 
persons, scenes, conversations, and encounters, which illus- 
trate the thinking and manners of the times. The poem 
of Judith is founded on the story of Judith and Holoferaes, 
but exhibits — characters and manners — a strange medley of 
Eastern and "Western, ancient and modern. 

The poetical element in these compositions is very lim- 
ited. It is almost confined to a few Ossian-like turns of 
thought or expression, which occur at intervals. The sub- 
stance consists of what we should ace. unit indifferent prose, 
subject to the restraints of a particular rhythm, the laws of 
which it is often difficult to discover. The Latin poetry of 
the Ajiglo-Saxons is deserving notice mainly, not a.- poetry, 
but as illustrating the taste ami scholarship realized in 
those days. If the poet too often lacked tire in his native 
tongue, he was not likely to feel it in attempting to speak 
through all the artificial impediments of an acquired lan- 
gna_ 

Bttoafa. The nearest approach to genuine poetry in the history 

of An-lo-Sa.\oii literature appears to have been realized in 
the popular lyric ballads. These compositions, as designed 

for the people, and not for the scholar, were natural in their 

style and substance, bearing only a very partial resemblance 
to the more ambitious productions jusl mentioned. They 
came into prevalence in the later period of Anglo-Saxon 
history. They treated of love, war, and the manners of 
the times, and of these with the admixture of pathos, energy, 
and satire common to the minstrel in his use of such themes. 
Many of the anecdotes given with so much finish in Hume's 
Historyfrom Malm-bury and others, were transmitted in this 
form to the times of the Normans. The licentious habits of 
king Edgar, the great favourite of Dunstan and his church- 
men, did not escape the lash of this troubadour literature. 
Some judgment may be formed of the skill which at times 
characterize these performances, from the account given 

* Turner's Anglo-Saxons, bk. ix. c. i.-v. 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 247 

of Alfred as finding his way to the tent of Guthorm the ™x>k h. 

Dane under the privileged guise of a minstrel. In that 

guise, too, Anlaf, the great Northman leader, is said to have 
gained access to the tent of Athelstan, when that king led 
his formidable army into ISTorthumbria. It thus appears 
that the most distinguished and accomplished men were 
known to be students in this art ; and that the harper had 
his place and reputation with all ranks, with people and 
princes.* 

The prose literature of the Anglo-Saxons, coming as it ^ t ° s r e e lite ' 
did wholly from the clergy, was naturally in a great degree 
ecclesiastical and theological. The only teaching accessible 
to them was such teaching as characterized the darkest in- 
terval of the Middle Age. The writings of Bede and Alcuin 
give us the most favourable view of prose composition as 
found among the Anglo-Saxon clergy ; and to mention the 
most favourable example among laymen is, of course, to 
name the great Alfred. "We learn from the writings of 
Alcuin, that he grew up from childhood in the city of 
York, and that he was educated in the school or college 
sustained there by the pious archbishop Egbert. The arch- 
bishop, and Aelbert his kinsman, conducted the teaching 
of the establishment. The course of instruction embraced 
grammar, rhetoric, jurisprudence, poetry, astronomy, physic, 
and theology — the last consisting of expositions of the Old 
and ISTew Testaments. Grateful was the feeling of Alcuin 
as he looked back in after life to the services of Aelbert 
in York, and remembered how the good man endeavoured to 
inspire his pupils with a true love of learning, as he read to 
them from the pages of many Latin authors — such as Cicero, 
Virgil, Pliny, Statius, Lucan, and Boethius. Alcuin was 
resident eight years in the court of Charlemagne, and sub- 
sequently found the quiet he coveted as abbot of Tours. 
His reputation and influence were great, both in the French 
court and in France generally. Bede's influence was more 
felt in his own country. Both were men of piety, and of 
great industry ; but Alcuin was more free from superstitious 

* Malmsbury de Reg. lib. ii. c. 4, 6. Bede, Hist. lib. iv. c. 24. Ingulf, 67, 
68. Hist. Miens. 505. 



248 



SAXONS AND DANES. 



BOOK II. 
Chap. 9. 



Mental cul 
ture check 
el by the 
Danes. 



credulity, more a man of the world, and a man of general 
capacity and culture, than the devout Saxon to whom the 
affection of our ancestors gave the name of the ' Venera- 
ble.' The prose writings of both these authors are admira- 
ble for their unpretending simplicity." On these models the 
style of Alfred was formed. Malmsbnry is loud in his praise 
of bishop Aldhelm as a prose writer, but the praise is ill- 
bestowed. He is everywhere exaggerated and unnat- 
ural.f 

The most favourable period in the history of Anglo- 
Saxon literature is that associated with the names of Bede 
and Alcuin. Their disciples were many. But soon after 
their day began the invasions of the Northmen : and such 
w.tc the ravages thru perpetrated, that the labours of Alfred 
in this direction were not so much labours to originate learned 
studies as to restore them. Thegreal Anglo Saxon king was 
occupied during the earlier part of his reign in the Btrug^ 
gle to save his country from the hand- of the men who had 
invaded it. When that objecl had been as far as possible 
achieved, he began to look to the social improvement and 

the intellectual culture of his people. In regard to litera- 
ture he had himself much to learn. Intil this time he had 

been ignorant of the Latin tongue. Amidst the cares of a 
royalty especially beset with care, he acquired a knowl- 
edge of that language. The use he made of this new power. 
Was to translate from that language such WOrks as he 
thought most likely to promote the religious and general 
improvement of his subjects. What are called Alfred's 
Works, consist, for the most part, of these translations. But 
they arc very free translations. lie often gives the sub- 
stance, in the place of the literal rendering. lie often omits 
and inserts at pleasure. These publications, accordingly, 
become expressive of the mind and heart of the patriot 
king. Among the works thus selected, were the Chronicle 
of t/<< World, & sort of general history by Orosius ; the 
Consolations of Philosophy, by that last of the Romans, 
Boethius ; portions of the writings of Pope Gregory, and, 

* See the Life of Alcuin, by Dr. Frederick Lorenz. 

f Turner's Anglo-Saxons, bk. ix. c. f>. Talgrave, c. 1, 8, 9. 



REVOLUTION EN" SOCIAL LIFE. 249 

apparently, Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Copies of these book il 

writings were multiplied and distributed, especially in the 

places where the clergy were engaged in the work of educa- 
tion.* The effect of such an example must have been very 
great. But all these hopeful proceedings were not a little 
counteracted by the subsequent inroads of the Danes. To 
the warlike god Odin, no sacrifice was thought to be more 
acceptable, than that of men who had deserted his worship, 
and become a set of shaven psalm-singers. Everything, in 
such places, was destroyed. More than the half of England 
passed into the hands of these strangers. Their power, as 
we have seen, became great along the whole coast north of 
the Thames, and stretched far inland, so as to cover a large 
portion of the great kingdom of Mercia, and of the ancient 
kingdom of Deira. 

Subsequently to the time of Alfred, there was room to 
hope that the Danes and Saxons might gradually amalga- 
mate, and conjointly prove strong enough to repel all fur- 
ther invasion. But if such hope was entertained, it proved 
to be illusive. Invasion only became more formidable as 
the island was known to have become more capable of resist- 
ance. The English Danes too often fraternized with the 
invaders, and disorder increased, until a Danish dynasty 
came, for a while, into the place of the Saxon. England 
thus fell into the hands of great landowners who were of 
two races. The house was thus divided against itself. The 
restoration of the Saxon line in Edward the Confessor 
seemed to promise that oil would be poured on these 
troubled waters. But that tendency of affairs was not to 
last. 

Of course, the converted Danes, after a time, shared 
considerably in the spirit of improvement. Odo, one of 
their number, became archbishop of Canterbury. The mind 
of Canute came under Christian influences with much ad- 
vantage to himself and his subjects. The counties occu- 
pied by the Danes included a larger proportion of freemen 
at the time of the Conquest than the more purely Saxon 
districts. But in a kingdom whose entire population was 

* Dr. Pauli's Life of Alfred, chap. vi. 



250 



SAXOXS AXD DAXES. 



B ca3 l L res tricted to between two and three millions, and with so 

large a proportion of the population in a condition more 

or less servile, the number acquiring any knowledge of let- 
ters must have been small." This privileged class received 
instructions in the schools connected with the different 
cathedrals and monasteries, or under the private tuition of 
ecclesiastics who were competent in such service, and 
disposed so to employ themselves. 

Bcionce. In this manner the Anglo-Saxons acquired the little 

they knew of science. Here, as everywhere, their object 
was not so much to discover as to learn — to rescue and 
secure the fragments of a past knowledge which seemed to 
be fast floating by them to oblivion. Arithmetic they 
studied after the maimer of the ancients, without the aid of 
the Arabic numeral-, and adhering to the metaphysical 
distinction of numbers. So studied, even arithmetic was a 
difficult science. Bede attempted something in natural 
philosophy. Hi- work here was to copy the truth and error 
of those who had gone before him. His great merit consists 
in the good sense which disposes him to attribute natural 
phenomena bo generally to natural causes. But the geog- 
raphy of our wonder-loving fathers teemed, not only witli 
mistakes, but with inventions of a very free description. 
The countries between Canterbury and Rome, and between 
Rome ami Jerusalem, came to be pretty familiar to them. 
Strange sights, however, according to report, were to be seen 
in some of those distant regions. Those who would travel 
far enough would find themselves in lands in which 
there were white people fifteen feet high, some with two 
faces, some with neither face nor head, their eyes and mouth 
being placed in their chest ; and some eight feet high, with 
a diameter equal to their altitude. Learned men did not, 
of course, pay much heed to these marvellous relations. 
Alcuin expresses himself very sensibly concerning physics, 

* Palgravc^ Commonwealth c. i. Mr. Hallam describes the eeorl as the pre- 
cursor of our English yeoman, and regards the serfs, or slaves proper, as consist- 
ing mostly of Britons, and of such Saxons as became slaves through becoming 
criminals. — Middle Ages, ii. 386 387. Saxons were sometimes thus reduced by 
other causes ; but, taken together, the serfs at the Conquest do not appear to 
have formed more than about one in eighty of the population. 



REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 251 

ethics, and logic, the favourite studies of his time. What book il 
the Romans knew on these subjects the more intelligent — — 
Anglo-Saxons knew and taught. This observation applies 
to the astronomy, the chemistry, the medicine, the surgery, 
and the metaphysics of our ancestors. In all the Roman 
authors were their preceptors, and they followed their mas- 
ters at various distances. In religion only was it given them 
to be innovators. They had substituted a new religion in 
the place of the old ; but even this had come to them from 
the old source.* 

In literature, and in mental culture of every description, 
the Saxons had to begin with the lowest elements. Even 
their teachers were the ill-instructed of a dark age — while 
their own struggle for independence, and even for existence, 
was often such as to leave them little leisure or inclination 
for such pursuits. Bearing these facts in mind, it should not 
be deemed surprising if the signs of intellectual life among 
them are found to be more valuable for what they seem 
to promise, than from what they include. - Enough was 
achieved in most unfavourable circumstances, to warrant the 
hope of something much better should better circumstances 
arise. The distance is no doubt great between a Bede and 
a Gibbon, a Cedmon and a Milton, but these men have all 
spoken the same mother-tongue, and belong to the develop- 
ment of the same national intellect. 

* Turner's Anglo-Saxons, bk. ix. c. "7, 8. 



CHAPTER X. 

CONCLUSION'. 



BOOK II. 



ohap. to, YI7E Lave seen that the settlement of the Saxons and 
'* Danes in Britain was a settlement by the sword. It 
led to a subjugation, and a large displacement, of t lie old 
British population. In the case of the invaders, this change 
brought with it a change from a Btate in which the Boil was 
not private property, but the property of the community, 
ever passing into new bands, to a Btate in which the private 
person comes to possess his freehold, and, as a consequence, 
Learns to add to the rearing of cattle, the tillage of the 
ground, the construction of a new order of buildings, and 
the signs of a general progress in industry, learning, science, 
and art. The restless sea-king becomes stationary, asa great 

landholder. His followers are content to live at his side 

as small landholders and tenants. Property accumulates 
from industry. With the increase of property, better 
usage, better law, and a better administration of law, mala' 
their appearance. Men everywhere feel more Becure in 
their persons and possessions. The steps in this course are 
slow ami irregular, but they are real, and what is once 
gained i> never wholly lost. 

It is common to attribute these happy results to the 
n-au r es of self-government with which our ancestors were 
familiar. The tithing, the hundred, and the county-court 
are all supposed to have been normal schools, in which the 
mind of the Anglo-Saxon was trained to understand, to 
appreciate, and to realize political liberty. But it should 
he remembered that such customs were by no means pe- 
culiar to the Anglo-Saxons. They existed substantially in 



CO]* JLTTSION. 253 

all the nations of Europe at that time, either as a contimi- book ii. 

.... . Chap. 10. 

ance of the municipia of old Rome, or as native to the new 

settlers. They exist at this day under governments which 
know nothing of political liberty. The Russian villager has 
his commune, which with him is a lesser empire, and not to 
be resisted. The Chinese, also, have lived for ages under a 
scheme of local government much more elaborate and 
scientific than anything existing in this country before the 
Conquest. But all Europe has not inherited our political 
freedom. The people of Russia and of China have no con- 
ception of it. 

How are we to account for this ? The main reason, we 
think, is to be found in the fact that those forms of lo- 
cal government have been purely administrative. They 
have been restricted to the local administration of law. 
Their relation to a central authority possessing the power 
to make or to unmake law has been purely passive. 
It is possible that the institutions of a people should be such 
as to cause them to be sensible that to them it pertains, in 
their measure, to make law, as well as to administer it ; 
and it is then that they become truly alive to the motives 
which dispose men to political action. Where the remedies 
for social evils are expected to come wholly from the gov- 
ernment, the people are naturally passive. But it is other- 
wise where the community is aware that the means 
of amelioration are really in their own hands. It is 
in this feeling of the freeman's relation to the high court of 
Parliament, as well as to the courts of law, that we have 
the great secret of English liberty. The hundred court, 
and the county court, were good schools, but their efficiency 
would not have been great had they stood alone. 

Not that the democratic element among our ancestors 
was very prominent, or very clearly defined. It was with 
Anglo-Saxon Britain in this respect as it was with Europe. 
It embraced the germs of all political theories. First, there 
was the church, with her principle of theocracy. Then 
there was the crown, as the emblem of monarchy. Next 
came the earl and the thane, as representatives of the aris- 
tocratic power. Next the men of the hundred court, or of 



254 SAXONS AND DANES. 

book ii. the borough court, as representing the democracy. The 

Chap. 10. ° ' l ° , J 

political history of England and of Europe is not the his- 
tory of any one of these principles, bnt the history of them 
all ; and consists especially in the history of the causes 
which have determined the measure of these respective in- 
fluences in different countries at different times. In our 
own history, the combined influence of these different ele- 
ments has given us results greatly more valuable than could 
have come from any one of them separately. The form 
in which our Anglo-Saxon laws gave protection to the per- 
son and property of the freeman, contained the seeds of all 
tlic liberties which later generations have been si. careful 
to define, expand, and Becnre. In those laws something is 
due to the justice iA' the sovereign, more t<> the jealousy of 
the subject. To study our constitutional history under the 
Normans and Plantagenets, the Tudors and Stuarts, with- 
out the study of it under the Atfglo-Saxons, would he to 

concern ourselves with effects apart from their causes. The 
usages and institutions of the men who fought under king 
Harold at Hastings, were to become to this country what 

their language ha- become. 

In religion, the change which took place in the history 
of the Anglo-Saxons i- not less observable than the change 
in their political and social life. It presents a conversion 
from heathenism to Christianity. It is true the Christianity 
embraced was imperfect, and had its admixtures of supersti- 
tion. It was the Christianity of the church of that age, 
not the Christianity of the sacred writings, nor of the first 
century. But that church existed a- a great moral power, 
in an age, when force was almost the only recognised 
power. Brute power was thus confronted by a higher power. 
An authority was introduced which was above human author- 
ity. The spiritual was declared to be above the temporal. 
To the latter men owed a bodily allegiance. To the former 
they owed the allegiance of mind. Only on the ground 
of this distinction can men know what is meant by liberty 
of conscience. The clergy claimed this spiritual liberty for 
themselves and for their flocks, from the rude chiefs of 
those days. Unhappily, the dominion over mind which 



CONCLUSION". 255 

they denied to the magistrate, they were only too eager to book ii. 

exercise themselves. Nevertheless, it was no small matter 

to compel the world of action to do homage in this manner 
to the world of thought ; and the time was to come when 
the arguments urged by the priest against the magistrate 
were to be urged by the people against the priest. To 
learn that there are things in religion that do not belong to 
Caesar is the next step to learning that there are things in 
it that do not belong to the priest. On the whole, the Chris- 
tianity professed by the Anglo-Saxons was the Christianity 
possible to them in their time, just as the principles of lib- 
erty which they realized were the principles possible to 
them in their circumstances. Their new faith, with all its 
faults, contributed to soften their manners, to strengthen their 
habits of industry, to infuse a more humane spirit into their 
social relations, to elevate and discipline their thoughts, and 
so to prepare them for laying that social groundwork on 
which their more favoured descendants have reared the con- 
structions befitting a later age. 



BOOK III. 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE N.'KMW- IN M'KMANDY. 

rpiIE Normans were of the same race with the people 
JL variously designated as Saxons and Angles, Jntes and 
Frieslanders, Danesand Northmen. Often in fend a1 home, 
• bands of freebooters generally avoided dissension 
abroad. We have seen that their piratical expeditions date 
as far back as the Becond eentnry : and they are continued 
until the Bettlemenl of the Norman power in this country, 
nearly nine centuries later. Every coast-land between the 
Baltic and the northern Bhores of Africa fell the scourge of 
their presence, more or less, during those many years. 
Charlemagne counselled his successors to keep a vigilant 
guard against this enemy on every Bhore and river. Louis- 
le-debonaire, in the early part of the ninth century, acted 
on tins precaution. He repelled the attacks made in his 
time. He did more, he persuaded Harold, a Dane, then in 
possession of some Rhenish provinces, to profess himself a 
Christian. 

It will be remembered that the attacks of the Northmen 
on Anglo-Saxon Britain began towards the close of the eighth 
century. In S35, and some subsequent years, the descents 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 257 

of the northern pirates on the shores of Gaul and Belgium B00K IIL 

r t & Chap. 1. 

were more than ever disastrous. In one Belgic city fifty- 

four churches are said to have been destroyed. They settled 
themselves at "Walcheren, and did their best to possess them- 
selves of island fortresses at the mouth of the Seine. Pes- 
tilence added its horrors to the terror inspired by the Scan- 
dinavian plunderers, and the dismay of the people filled the 
heavens with portents. 

The year 841 brings us to the first great invasion of First inva- 

« ~ ° sion of 

Neustria, the future Normandy. In that year the king of Neustria. 
France withdrew his ships from Rouen. The Northmen 
squadrons, which were always ready to assist each other on 
the understanding of being admitted to their share in the 
common booty, seized the moment to take possession of the 
month of the Seine. It happened that the tides were high, 
rushing strongly inland. The armament, under the direc- 
tion of Oscar, its commander, made rapid way with the 
stream ; and the Northmen glanced for the first time on 
the cornfields and orchards, on wood and dell, on church 
and monastery, village and town, on either side, as they 
shone brightly in the summer sun, and rested in that quiet- 
ness and opulence which a long season of prosperity had 
secured to them. But those glances at the signs of so much 
wealth were taken while each man pulled at the oar with 
the full strength of his Norwegian arm, and used the rising 
tide to the utmost. 

Rouen, and the surrounding country, fell into the hands spoils from 
of the invaders. They occupied the city three days. When 
they descended the river, their spoil, in treasures of all de- 
scriptions, and in captives of both sexes, and of every rank, 
was a novelty, from its variety and value, even in the his- 
tory of the Northman successes. Much was done by this 
enterprise towards preparing the way for the dukedom of 
Normandy. 

Four years later, the famous Ragnar Lodbrog, whose Kagnar 
name is so disastrously associated with our own history, 
recaptured Eouen, and besieged and took the city of Paris. 
Lodbrog's track was marked by the usual devastations. He 
returned to Denmark laden with wealth. On this occasion, 
Vol. I.— 17 



258 NORMALS* AND ENGLISH. 

B Ch5 V L tne crown °f France paid its first Danegelt. The enemy 

was thus bought oft 1 for a time, but for a short time only. 

Oscar Mas still roving from coast to coast at the head of a 
powerful fleet. Eric the Red, a chief of higher authority 
than Lodbrog in his own country, came abroad with a great 
armament. The shores of the Elbe, the Seine, and the 
Loire were all ravaged, now by one, now by another. 
Rivalries, like those which divided the states of the Hep- 
tarchy, divided the Continental princes, precluded <m.iii- 
bincd and vigorous resistance, and the way was thus left 
opeu to the common enemy. In 857 Paris was again 
attacked. In SGI it was again taken. By this time many of 
the Northmen were settled on the lands which they had con- 
quered. Large provinces were ceded to them by treaty. They 
married wives from the new country. Ground was thus laid 
for a gradual change of hain't- and religion. Bu1 wide was 
the -weep of disturbance which preceded this comparative 
rest. 'Take a map and cover with vermilion the prov- 
ince-, districts, and shores which the Northmen visited, as 
the record of each invasion. The colouring will have to be 
repeated more than ninety times successively before you 
arrive at the conclusion of the Carlovingian dynasty. Fur- 
thermore, mark, by the usual symbol of war, two crossed 
Bwords, the localities where battles were fought by or against 
the pirates; where they were defeated or triumphant; or 
where they pillaged, burned, or destroyed ; and the valleys 

and banks of Elbe. Rhine, and Moselle, Scheldt, Meii>e, 
Somme, and Seine. Loire, Garonne, and Adour, the inland 
Allier, and all the coasts and coast-lands between estuary 
and estuary, and the countries between the river streams, 
will appear bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise.' * 
Iffdnke Such was the force of the stream of migration which 

umn.iy." had set in when Hollo and his Northmen first entered the 
Seine, took possession of Rouen, and settled there. Little 
credit is duv to the accounts which have readied us con- 
cerning the early history of Eollo. Three generation.-, it 
seems, had passed away since his decease before anything 
relating to him was committed to writing. AVe know, how- 
• Palgravc's History of England and Normandy. 



THE NOEMAKS IN NOEMANDY. 259 

ever, that lie lived through the reigns of three French kings, book hi. 

' © e £> 5 Chap. 1. 

and that he extorted concessions from them all. His first 

occupation of Rouen was in 876 ; but it is not until 911 
that he becomes the settled and recognised lord of Nor- 
mandy. 

Rollo died at an advanced age. "Who should succeed Wllham L 
him was a question which he left professedly in the hands 
of his great men. But he recommended his son to that 
dignity. In this proceeding we see the influence of the vol- 
untary and equal terms on which the confederations of the 
Northmen were based. But the Normans conformed them- 
selves to the customs of the Franks in this particular, as 
in almost everything. "William possessed none of the war- 
like tendencies of his father. The clergy, to whose care he 
had been entrusted from his youth, had trained him to other 
tastes. But, like many timid men, he could be treacherous 
and cruel ; and he was himself deceived and murdered in 
the ninth year of his reign. lie was succeeded by his nat- 
ural son Richard, a boy not ten years of age. This changeRiciiard i. 
brought its troubles. The Norman power in France was for 
a season in much danger. But the reign of Richard ex- 
tended from 91:2 to 996. In his policy he took sides with 
the French monarchy, and showed himself friendly to the 
church and to churchmen. So great was the influence of the 
clergy on this grandson of Rollo, that at his death, he deem- 
ed himself unworthy of burial in a church, and desired that 
he might be laid by its outside wall, as near as it might be, 
but not within it. He was succeeded by his son Richard, 
surnamed the Good. 

But Richard the Second was also a youth on his acces- Richard n. 
sion ; and this circumstance was again the occasion of dis- sivo spirit 
turbance. The peasantry of Normandy were grievously mans. 
oppressed. They meditated an insurrection. But the leaders 
were seized, and their heads and hands were sent to be ex- 
posed in their respective villages. Some other dangers were 
also dealt with successfully. In his general policy Richard 
followed the steps of his father. He also kept up a friendly 
and prudent relation with his countrymen the Danes. His 
influence was great. The balance of affairs in France was 



260 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B CHAt." L ^ n n ' s hand. His military successes were considerable. 
But these were a natural result of the amount of military 
passion and ability at his disposal. Already the chivalry 
of Normandy had become much too formidable to be re- 
stricted to that province. It found outlets for itself, not 
only in every part of France, bnt in Spain, and in the south 
of Italy. One of Richard's vassals, Roger of Tosny, at- 
tacked the Moslems of Spain, and distinguished himself alike 
by his valour and his cruelties. Ee is said to have made 
his Moslem captives eal the flesh of their fellow Moslems, 
cut up and boiled like pork. The enterprises ui' the Nor- 
mans in Italy and Sicily were more legitimate and honour- 
able. Not only Sicily, bul Apulia and Calabria fell into 
their hands. In fact, had the Normans been confined to 
France as a held of action at this juncture, France must 
have become Norman ; and had not the crown of England 
become a tempting prize some years Later, the crown of 
France would probably have been Beized in its stead. 

Richard m. The just and beneficent reign of Richard II. came to a 

Robert the . ' ' 

Devil. close in L026, having extended to thirty years. He was 
succeeded by his eldest son, of the same name. Bu1 Richard 
III. was poisoned in the Becond year of his reign —poisoned, 
it is believed, through the influence of his younger brother 
Robert, who is known in historj as his successor under the 
name of Roberl the Devil. Robert was assailed on his 
accession from several quarters, but he succeeded in consol- 
idating his power. Ami DOW this man of violent pass 
and dark deeds, resolved, as many like him in those ages 
had done, to Income a religions devotee, and to perform a 
pilgrimage to Jerusalem. < >n his way home the fate befel 
him which had befallen his brothei- Richard — he was poi- 
soned. This event paved the May for the accession of his 
illegitimate Bon William, who 1 ame William II. of Nor- 
mandy, and William the Conqueror of England. 

The early Years of William, like those of all his prede- 
cessors, were years of inquietude and danger. Hi,- uncle, by 
his mother's side, saved him more than once from the mach- 
inations of his enemies, by removing him from his chamber 
under the cover of the night to some humble dwelling near it. 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 261 

In one instance the weapon designed for himself destroyed B00K In - 

one of his household who happened to be in his apartment. 

But "William survived, and lived to subdue one enemy after 
another, until his power became more formidable than that 
of any man who had borne his title. His extraordinary 
capacity and energy contributed in part to this result. 
But other qualities had their share in producing it. Wil- 
liam could deceive, could lie, could be pitiless, and could 
use the poisoned cup to remove impediments from the path 
of his ambition. Few men with the bad tendencies of human 
nature in such force have risen to such greatness. No man 
loved him. ISTo man hoped for any thing from his virtue. 
His seeming good was never good, it was always something 
meted out by personal considerations. Robert the Devil was 
his father : but he lacked some of the virtues even of such a 
sire, for Robert was at times genial, mirthful, and had a 
great contempt for money-getting, while his son William 
was reserved, gloomy, and hardly more remarkable for his 
ambition than for his covetousness.* 

It is now expedient that we should look a little more society in 

t t n /, . . -v,- , . t Normandy. 

closely into the state ot society in Normandy, seeing that 
the good or bad of that society is about to become so much 
our own. 

One remarkable feature in the history of the Northmen Greatrevo 

u lutiorj in 

in Normandy consisted in the readiness with which they manners. 
threw off almost everything that had been characteristic of 
them down to the time of their settlement in that country. 
They retained their warlike habits, their pride, and their 
love of independence and adventure. But they adhered no 
longer to their Scandinavian customs ; they soon ceased to 
speak their mother-tongue ; they adopted the religion of the 
Franks, and with it their modes of legislation and of judica- 
ture, and their general usage. Some of these changes came 
more suddenly than others, but all came about, more or less, 
within a few generations. 

We have no evidence that the Normans retained any 
vestige of the poetry which had exerted so much influence 

* See his character by a writer in the Saxon Chronicle (a. d. 1087) who had 
lived at his court, and evidently does not mean to do wrong to his memory. 



262 N0K3IANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. on some of the northern nations. So soon did they lose 

Chap. 1. J 

their native language, that they have not given us a single 

line in it, etiher in manuscript or in monument. "What 
they were in the homes from which they came, and what 
prompted them to migrate from those homes, cannot be 
learnt from any memorials of their own. They could ap- 
preciate the more advanced civilization of their neighbors 
They were a minority in the midst of a majority who spoke 
a superior Language. They married wives in the new coun- 
try who know nothing of the Bpeech of their husbands, 
nothing of the customs that had been familiar to them ; and 
the mothers trained their children to their own ways and 
preferences. When the Christian clergy came to have Borne 
influence, that weight was thrown into the same Bcale. 
fcaceptto" ( ),,,. of the earliest and most conspicuous of these changes 

nt Chris- ' ~ 

uanity— wag t ] lr adoption of Christianity. But in this event we see 

vicious lives ' 

eierpy the impress of the N « >it i uui Hat i< >ual i ty. Among the Scan- 

dinavian nations the power of the priesthood is qoI great. 
Few men of thai order would appear to have accompanied 
the migratory bands who Boughl a home southward. When 
the Norman- professed themselves Christians, quite a cen- 
tury passed before the clergy were allowed to assemble in 
synod or council — a course of tilings singularly different 
from what had taken place among the Anglo-Saxons. 

Among the latter, an exemption of delinquent priests from 
all responsibility to the Becular magistrate was soon claimed 
and Becured.* But theorder were qo1 soon to be bo privileged 
in Normandy. The morals of the clergy, however, do not 
appear to have been improved by this course of proceeding 
towards them. It was notorious that priests in general 
kept their women ; that prelates took money as the price of 
tolerating the disorder : and that the manners of those dig- 
nitaries were often most dissolute. Attempts to remove 
these scandals called forth riots in the Btreets, and even in the 
churches. With such thing- as possible among the clergy, we 
cannot expect much of the conduct proper to the Christian 
profession among the laity. So late as the first year in the 
eleventh century, some fifty years only before the Conquest, 

* Ancient Laws and Institutions, 12, 74, 82, 14*7, 148, 165, 177, 305. 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 263 

a French ecclesiastic, on being invited by the duke of Nor- B q%^ I i I 

mandy to reform a corrupt monastery at Fecamp, refused, 

alleging as his reason that he knew the Normans to be 
rough and barbarous in their manners, and more inclined to 
destroy Christian edifices than to rear them. 

But it must be admitted that the next half century pro- Norman ar- 

*' ■*■ > chitectuiv. 

duced considerable change in these respects. Norman archi- 
tecture, both civil and ecclesiastical, made extraordinary ad- 
vances. It is from this period that we must date what is 
now known as the Norman style, both in church and castle. 
Edifices of both descriptions are multiplied in all directions. 

Contemporary with the origin of Norman architecture Learning, 
is the rise of Norman learning. The earliest names in the 
history of literature in Normandy, such as Dudo of St. 
Quentin, William of Jumieges, William of Poitiers, Lan- 
franc, and Anselm, come late, and they are the names of 
Italians and Frenchmen, not Norman names. But in the 
eleventh century Norman ladies began to read the ballad 
poetry of the time ; and the Norman noble might be seen 
listening to the extravagant praise of himself or of his ances- 
tors, from the lips of minstrels who seem to have been half- 
poets, half-jugglers. The abbey of Bee, over which Lanfranc 
and Anselm presided in succession became famous as a place of 
learning. The abbeys of St. Evroult, Jumieges, and Wand- 
ville had also their measure of celebrity on that ground. 
But the court of the first dukes, says a competent authority, Defective 
< though not exactly wanting in splendour, was, neverthe- of the ° n 
less, by no means a school of what, even at that time, was Normans - 
regarded as refinement. One of the pretexts used by Louis 
d'Outremer for taking the young duke Richard to his court 
was, that he might there receive a better education. Women 
appear to have had no influence at the court of Rouen. 
The dukes were in a great measure ruled by the clergy ; 
instead of wives, they had concubines. Not until the Con- 
quest did the ideas of the Normans begin to expand them- 
selves : their intercourse with other nations made them 
acquainted with new branches of knowledge, and contrib- 
uted to commerce and industry.' * 

* Benjamin Thorp, in Lappenberg's England under the Norman Kings, 77- 



264 



NORMALS AXD ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 1. 



Serfs .'Ui-1 
peasants. 



In regard to the ' commerce and industry ' of the Nor- 
mans there is little to be said. Commerce with distant 
nations did not occupy their thoughts. Their trade consisted 
almost wholly of such internal traffic as belongs naturally to 
all civilized communities. As conquerors they availed them- 
selves of the productiveness of the land, and of the labour 
and skill which had wont to be bestowed upon it. The hus- 
bandman produced grain of the usual descriptions. Fruit 
appears to have been abundant. Fish were salted, and laid 
up for use. It has been made a reproach to our Saxon 
ancestors, that they led so much on pork, and repaired so 
often to the beer barrel. But these coarse tastes, if such 
they were, appear to have been a- common to the subjects 
of duke William as to those of king Harold. By the 
French the Normans were nicknamed the beer-drinkers y 
that beverage being so much mure palatable to their true 
Scandinavian taste than wine, even when they had the means 
of substituting the one for the «>ther. The forests of Nor- 
mandy, like those of England, could hardly fail to make the 
vocation of the swineherd very common. Old Norman 
charter- 3peak of forest range for such animals a- a great 
privilege ; and make little mention of cattle. 

The condition of the cultivators of the soil in Normandy 
was one of sad depression. They were bound to the land on 
which they were born, and passed with it, from hand to 
hand, like any other portion of its stock. Their lord com- 
manded their service- at pleasure, either to till his ground, 
or to tight his battles. Time somewhat softened the rigours 
of this service, but the burden continued to be one hard to 
bear. 

81. The following is Sir Francis Palgrave's description of a French camp so early 
as the middle of the tenth century : ( The French encampment might lie seen 
spreading and stretching along the eastern bank of the Drive. In the rear was 
a fine and fertile mixture of hill ami plain — magnificent was the spectacle exhib- 
ited, the tents and pavilions, their stuff fresh from the loom, unfrayed by use, un- 
dimmed by rain, their bright colours unladed by the rays of the sun, in whose 
light they were for the first time shining. Amidst these thousand tents, snow- 
white and azure and scarlet, the golden pavilion of Louis, emulating Oriental 
splendour, arose conspicuous, surmounted by the radiant eagle, the heirdoom of 
Charlemagne's empire. Never had there been seen a more unsparing display of 
noble armour, spirited horses, and a more brilliant and imposing array.' — Hist. 
ii. 180. Such was the school to which the Normans were sent ; and 
they learnt their lesson, but not so soon, nor to the end so perfectly, as some 
have supposed. 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 265 

Whatever the legislation of the Normans may have "been B %®f p I | T - 
before the settlement in Normandy, their laws, as known No ^^" 
to ns, are little distinguishable from those which obtained ^govern 
in France generally. Prominence was given to trial by ment " 
ordeal, still more to trial by battle. In the feudal relations 
that subsisted, men held their lands so immediately from the 
duke, that no lord could seize them without trespass against 
the crown, as well as against the subject. Before his death, 
the Conqueror, as we shall see, assimilated the holdings of 
land in this country to this Norman usage. Nor is this the 
only particular in which, for better or worse, the laws of 
the one have become mixed with those of the other. The 
Great Council, the courts which have grown out of it, per- 
manent judges, and even trial by jury, all have their relations 
to Anglo-Norman thought, as well as to the ancient institu- 
tions of this country. 

The notion that the chivalry of Europe owes its origin ^'fa^ 
to the Normans, is a wide conclusion deduced from narrow 
premises. Chivalrous no doubt they were, and in as high 
a degree perhaps as any race south of the Pyrenees. But 
the Romance of Antar shows that the form of culture we 
denote by that term was highly developed in the East long 
before it became observable in the West. The haughty 
Spaniard learnt it from his no less haughty antagonist the 
Moslem ; and the Christian princes who resolved to possess 
themselves of Palestine, found the model of their unselfish 
devotion in the men who were no less resolved to dispute 
their pretensions on that point. We should not have had a 
Richard had there not been a Saladin. Chivalry comes 
from noble instincts common to humanity. The germs of 
it may be found widely scattered, and even among the 
rudest. Circumstances give it form and prominence. The 
Christian element in European chivalry has made it to be a 
chivalry of its own order. 

Such, then, were the Normans in Normandy. They bore character 
no good-will to the French, though they were obliged to mlul N ° r ' 
learn from them. Wace, the Norman poet, makes the Con- 
queror describe them as proud, litigious, and hard to gov- 
ern ; and another authority, who had studied their charac- 



2GG HOBMAJSS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. ter in Sicily, gives as their good and evil, by describing them 
— - as 'crafty, vindictive, domineering, eager to leave their 
country for the sake of greater gain abroad, dissembling, 
neither prodigal nor avaricious, devoted to the study of elo- 
quence, Lovers of the chase, hawking, horses, arms, and 
beautiful attire; in short, a people that must be held in 
check by the laws.'* 

All our histories relate how the Norman education of 

Edward the Confessor disposed him, when he became king of 
England, to bestow his favours upon Normans; how "Wil- 
liam, duke of Normandy, visited his cousin Edward, in- 
spected his dominions, and returned laden witb presents; 
how, on the visit of Harold, son of the great earl Godwin, 

to Normandy, the duke declared that Edward had named 

him his successor to the English throne ; and how ho bound 

the Saxon by oath to favour his accession to that dignity. 
Bui there is an air ..f the improbable about this story. It 

should be remembered, that it was with the character of 

Harold after the Conquest, very much as it has been with 
the character of Cromwell since the Restoration. The 

reputation of both passed into hand- that would he sure to 

heap almost every kind of wrong upon it. 

Concerning this alleged promise of the Confessor, it is 
to be observed thai Edward must have known that, in the 

absen P a direct heir, or even in the presence of one. it 

did not resl with him to name his successor. The decision 
of thai question, according to the usages of the Anglo-Saxons, 
-1 entirely with the Witanagemote, who always elected 
the next of kin when eligible, hut who never scrupled 
to depart from that course when some good reason seemed 
to require it. In the next place, there i> evidence that Ed- 
ward, in accordance with this usage, made an effort to se- 
cure the succession to his nearest kinsman, Edward, the son 
of Edmund Lronside, and afterward- to the young Edgar, 
the grandson of that prince. -j- It is to be home in mind 

• Malaterra, cited in Thorp'fl translation of Lappcnberg's England under (he 
Norman Kings. 

f Citron. Sax. ad an. 1064, 1065. Flor. Wigorn, ad an. 1054. Wendover, 
under the year 1057, Bays: 'Eadward, king of England, being advanced in 
years, senl Aldred, bishop of Worcester, into Hungary, and recalled thence 
Edward, son of king Edmund his brother, with the intention of making him 
his successor.' 



THR NORMANS EST NORMANDY. 267 

also, tliat the three earls named by "William as having been book in. 

; . & Chap. 1. 

present when the king of England is said to have made this 

promise, were all persons who were no longer living. Fur- 
thermore, the Ango-Saxons knew nothing of this transac- 
tion, not even of Harold's visit to Normandy. The whole 
story rests on the authority of the Anglo-Norman writers, 
and these are all more or less inconsistent with each other 
in regard to time and circumstances. It is true, this 
alleged piece of history is presented at large on the famous 
Bayeux tapestry. But that tapestry is simply a putting of 
the story of the above writers into needlework. It may be an 
authority about the armour or the costume of those times — 
it is no authority in relation to history. It is probable 
that, for some one of the various purposes assigned, Harold 
may have visited Normandy, and equally probable, Ave 
think, that the other circumstances are merely convenient 
fictions grafted on that fact. The Godwin family were long 
the great antagonists of Norman influence in this country, 
and the penalty of pursuing that course, whether resulting 
from patriotism or from ambition, has come heavily upon 
their memory. 

Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, died soon after Death <>r the 
his landing in England. His son Edgar, at the time of the Piansof'" 
Conquest, was still a youth. In ordinary circumstances his 
claims would probably have been postponed in favour of 
some older and more efficient member of the royal family. 
Edward on his death-bed had commended Harold as his suc- 
cessor ; and the men who afterwards declared him king, did 
so no doubt from the conviction that his leadership gave them 
their only chance of saving the country. The duke of Nor- 
mandy was in the park near Rouen, attended by knights, 
and squires, and pages — had strung his bow, and was about 
to enjoy the pleasures of the chase, when a messenger ar- 
rived, who drew him aside, and informed him that the king 
of England was no more, and that all the great men at his 
funeral had united in proclaiming Harold his successor. 
The duke changed countenance, became deeply agitated, 
loosened and fastened his mantle, and without uttering a 
word, or any one venturing to speak to him, he hastened to a 



268 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. "boat and crossed the Seine. On entering the hall of his 

Chap. 1. ~ 

palace, he threw himself on a bench, drew his mantle over 

his face, and rested his head for support. This paroxysm 
over, he informed his attendants of what had happened, and 
soon convened a large parliament of his nobles, who, after 
not a few expressions of misgiving, agreed to become his 
confederates in his proposed invasion of England. The feel- 
ing of the majority was, that success in England was by no 
means certain, and that, if realized, it must be fatal to Xor- 
mandy. The duke, however, overcame this difficulty. The 
contributions to be made by each to the great armament 
wen- fixed, and it is important to observe, that the joint 
nature of the enterprise, of conrse implied that there should 

be a joint distribution both of spoil and of power. Profuse 

were the promises of this nature then made.* 
conn.i William did not obtain much assistance beyond lis own 

territories. Bu1 the pope sent him a consecrated banner 
and his blessing. Harold, though ho had founded an abbey, 

hail nothing monastic in his nature. Ee Mas not formed to 
be a favourite with the clergy. \\' ho know any thing of the 
injurious representations made concerning him in Home, he 
did nothing to refute them. Ee relied on his own strong 

Englishmen, and believed that by their aid he might Bafely 
defy the Normans. This confidence arose in part from the 
numbers that flocked to his standard; still more from the 
reports concerning the numbers of the enemy which had 
been -ent him by his treacherous correspondent Count 
Baldwin of Flanders. 

PeveiSSm ( )n t he morning of the twenty-eighth of September, L066j 

a Btrange vessel was seen approaching the Busses coast near 

Hastings. It anchored not far from the shore. Soon three 
or four other vessels came in sight from the same point. In 

a few hours, the number of sails multiplied, until the surface 
of the sea seemed covered a- with a forest. In that first 
vessel was the duke of Normandy — in the rest were some 
50,000 men-at-arms, exclusive of a large body of infantry.* 

* JRoman de Rou, v. 10083 ct scq. Lappcnbcrg's England under the 
Anglo-Saxon Kings, ii. 282-28'7. 
f Ordcricus, lib. iii. c. 14. 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 269 

The whole fleet swept along the coast in sight of old Beachy B g°K ip 

Head, and in the inlet to the north of it, now known as 

Pevensey Bay, the invaders disembarked. 

More than ten centuries had passed since a similar anna- Military 
ment was seen approaching this island under the command English 
of Caesar ; and more than six centuries since the keels of 
Hengist the sea-king landed their complement of fighting 
men on the coast of Kent. So the great epochs of Revolu- 
tion by the Sword have been marked in our history. 

Harold, as one of his misfortunes, had to face two pow- The sum- 
erful armies, in distant parts ot the kingdom, almost at the 
same time. Rumours concerning the intentions and prepa- 
rations of the duke of Normandy soon reached England. 
During the greater part of the summer, Harold, at the 
head of a large naval and military force, had been on 
the watch along the English coast. But months passed 
away, and no enemy became visible. William, it was said, 
had become aware of the measures which had been taken to 
meet him. It was believed by many that his followers had 
become distrustful and divided. Many supposed that, on 
various grounds, the enterprise had been abandoned. Pro- 
visions also, for so great an army, became scarce. The men 
began to disperse ; and Harold, disbanding the remainder, 
returned to London.* 

But the news now came that Harald Ilardrada, king of invasion 
Norway, had landed in the north, and was ravaging the Tostigand 

• i m • tt in it i i Hardrada. 

country in conjunction with lostig, Harold s elder brother. 
This event came from one of those domestic feuds which 
did so much at this juncture to weaken the power of the 
English. 

Tostig had exercised his authority in Northumbria in Feuds be- 
the most arbitrary maimer, and had perpetrated atrocious g7eat n th ° 
crimes in furtherance of his objects. The result was an swfonfe- ' 
amount of disaffection which seems to have put it out of TosUg7 
the power of his friends to sustain him. He had married 
a daugther of Baldwin, count of Flanders, and so was 
brother-in-law to the duke of Normandy. His brother 
Harold, as he affirmed, had not done a brother's part to- 

* Chron. Sax. 1066. Fl. Wijrorn. 



270 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. war ds him, and lie -was more disposed, in consequence, to 
.side with the Norman than with the Saxon in the approach- 
ing struggle. The army with which he now appeared, con- 
sisted mostly of Norwegians and Flemings, and their 
avowed object was to divide not Less than half the kingdom 
beween them. Mercia, as thus menaced, naturally took 
part with the men of Wessex. But in Mercia also there 
was disaffection and distrust. Harold had come into severe 
collision with Leofric, the powerful carl of that province; 
and subsequently with his successor, the great Alfgar. It 
is true, both those great men were now dead, and Harold 
had married Eadgyth, a daughter of Alfgar. But the 
marriage could hardly have been a happy one. Eadgyth 
was a woman of great ambition, and unscrupulous in her 
use of means to -"ratify her passions. Her brothers, the 
young carl.- Edwin and Morcar, appear to have been esti- 
mable men, and wore much beloved. But there i- room to 
think that, being themselves of the family of Leofric, they 
Mere not altogether pleased in Eeeing a member of the rival 
family of Godwin on the throne. They summoned their 
forces, however, to repel the invasion underTostig. Before 
Harold could reach the north, they hazarded an engagement 

Defeat of at a place named Fulford on the Ouse, not far from Bish- 
Edwin and , , , r™ 

»t opstoke. But their measures were not wisely taken, lney 

Fulford. ' ... 

were defeated with greal loss 

• f The invader- mvih to have regarded this victory as decid- 

Btamford ' ' 

Bridge. m g t ne f a te ,,f that part of the kingdom. Chey obtained bos- 

tages at York, and then moved to Stamford Bridge, where 

they began the work of dividing the northern parts of Eng- 
land between them. But in the midsl of these proceedings 
clouds of dust were Been in the distance. The first thought 
was, that the multitude which seemed to be approaching 
must he friends. But the illusion was soon at an end. The 
dust raised was by the march of an army of West-Saxons 
under the command ofHarold. The Norwegians, in their false 
confidence, had not kept well together. Tostig, who knew 
what was to he expected from an arm\ of Wessex men 
under such leadership, advised a retreat. But the Xorwe- 

* Sim. Dunelm. II. Hunt. Marian. Scot. Fl. "Wigorn. Sax. Chron. 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 271 

gian kino; was a man of renown in Lis own land. It was B00K m 

Chap. 1. 



not for him to take a course that would look so much like 
cowardice. An engagement was accordingly inevitable. Parley be- 

O S o J tween 

Tostig and his Flemings were marshalled apart. Pres- ^J^ 1 and 
entry, a body of twenty horsemen, completely cased in 
armour, appoached this division, and one of their number 
called for a man who should take a message from Harold to 
his brother Tostig. The man so addressed, answered ' 1 
am Tostig.' ' Then,' said the other, ' King Harold sends to 
thee his good-will, and this message — he tends to thee peace, 
and all Northumbria ; yea, he will not grudge a third of his 
kingdom to have thee as his faithful friend.' — ' Why has 
not this come before? much blood has now been spilt,' said 
Tostig. ' But what of Hardrada the X» ►rwegian, what recom- 
pence for him?' — ' Seven feet of England's earth,' was the 
reply, ' and as much more as his length is beyond that of 
other men,' said the Saxon. 'Then go to thy master,' was 
the answer, ' and tell him to prepare for battle, for Norwe- 
gian men shall never say that Tostig played false to their 
king in the land of his enemies.' These words seem to say 
that Tostig, hard man, and man of blood that he was, had 
Borne good thing in him. Hardrada had observed from a 
distance the high bearing of the horseman from the Saxon 
ranks, and was not the more assured of success in the ap- 
proaching struggle on being told that it was Harold himself. 
For just before, the northern chief, conspicuous from his 
costume, and a man whose high stature raised him above 
all men near him, had not kept his seat, as it was manifest 
Harold could. Through a false step of his horse, he had 
been thrown to the ground. Harold saw the accident, and 
when told that the chief who had fallen was his great rival 
Hardrada of Norway, he turned to his followers, and said, 
' a most stately person, truly ; but, you see, my friends, his 
luck is already gone from him.' And now the work of 
death began. 

The Norwegian infantry were formed into a hollow circle. Battle of 
Their shields were linked together, so as to present a tortoise Bridge/ 
line of defence. Their spears were planted in the ground 
before them, and pointed breast-high towards the enemy, to 



272 NORMALS AXD ENGLISH. 

^u^V 1 ' cne °k the onset of cavalry. The light archers were so 
placed as to gall the foe wherever the pressure should be- 
come most dangerous. So long as the Northmen preserved 
their solid line, and kept their spears in position, neither 
infantry nor cavalry made much impression on them. The 
Sa\oii> seemed to grow weary in their repeated attacks 
without result. Whereupon the Norwegians grew more 
bold. Men here and there began to rush forward from the 
ranks. This brought on the crisis. The Saxons seized the 
favorable moment, broke the line of the enemy, and sent 
disorder and death wherever they came. In vain did the 
strong arm of Eardrada deal destruction on many a foeman. 
His followers were Losing ground, when an arrow entered 
his neck, and he fell to the earth to expire. Victory now 
seemed to declare for the Saxon. But suddenly a large 
body of Norwegians, who had been hastening to the 

held from a distance, made their appearance. Harold and 
his men had now to begin their work anew. But they 

were still strong in hand and heart. Tostig refused all terms, 
lie tell, a- Eardrada had fallen, doing all that valour could 
do to turn the tide of the conflict againsl his assailants. < >ne 
strong Norwegian kept the narrow pass of the bridge over 
the Derwenl against all comers, killing, it is said, some forty 
assailants with his own hand, lie was only vanquished 
when his enemies contrived to assail him in front and rear. 
So ended one of the mosl stubborn and destructive battles 
in English history. The victory of the Wessex men was 
complete.* 

Men of after generations saw the bones of the slain 
bleaching on the surface of that tield. But no trace of the 
past is now to he seen there. The green meadow-slopes 
drop gently and gracefully, from opposite lines, towards 
the waters of the Derwent. The barge floats safely along in 
the course of a canal not far from the river-side. The quiet 
village street, and scattered village homes, may now he seen 
there on either hand. The bridge where the strong Norwe- 
gian kept his own so long, has been displaced by one on 

* Chron. Sax. Fl. "Wigorn. Marian. Scot. Ordcricus. Adam. Bivm. 
lib. i. E. Iligden. Snorre, cc. 8G-93. 



TIIE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 273 

which his task would have been more difficult, and one book hi 

beside which there now rises a lofty viaduct, along which, 

as we remember, the rush of modern travel disturbed our im- 
agination as it seemed to be bringing back to us the rush 
of the ancient battle. 

The battle of Stamford Bridge was fought on the 26th ™. e . 
of September. It was, as we have seen, on the morning of sources - 
the 28th, that the strange sail made its appearance not far 
from Hastings, which proved to be the herald of the great 
Norman armament. The news of the landing of the Normans 
was conveyed to Harold in great haste, while resting with 
his army in York. Now the crisis had come. How was it 
to be met ? Northumbria, so far from rendering help, re- 
quired the presence of a considerable force to ensure tran- 
quillity. Mercia, represented by the brothers-in-law of 
Harold, the carls Edwin and Morcar, was cold in his behalf, 
and could hardly, perhaps, have been brought into the field 
with much effect so soon after the disastrous battle of Ful- 
ford. The Danes, forming so large a portion of the popula- 
tion, both in Northumbria and Mercia, were openly indif- 
ferent to the pending struggle ; or, if inclined either way, 
were with the Normans rather than with the Saxons. We 
see the fruit of this Danish policy in the special favour so 
often shown to that people by the Normans in after time. 
Harold, accordingly, was obliged to rest almost wholly on 
the pure Saxon element of the south. Hence the force 
which he was able to bring together was hardly superior to 
the invaders in regard to numbers, and much inferior to 
them in regard to military experience and equipment. Not 
a few of his followers consisted of patriotic men who volun- 
teered their services almost unarmed, having no better 
weapons to use than a club or a fork, a pike or a sling. In 
the Norman army the proportion of cavalry was enormous, 
such as should in itself have sufficed for the conquest of 
almost any kingdom in Europe. But in this respect the 
army under Harold was weak, as all Anglo-Saxon armies 
had hitherto been. 

William tried the effect of negotiation before appealing wiiiiam's 
to the sword. He was willing, he said, to cede to Harold, 
Vol. I.— 18 



274 nokmjLns and English, 

book in. the whole of England north of the Humber : and to his 

Chap. 1. O ' 

brother Gyrth, all the lands that had been in possession of 

the late earl Godwin ; or he would leave the issue to a sin- 
gle combat, to the judgment of the pope, or even to a deci- 
sion on the basis of Norman or English law. But Harold 
appears to have seen, that in the posture to which affairs 
had come, the only choice left to England, was either to free 
itself of the Normans, or to become their victim. The 
hollowness of the fairest of these promises, if accepted, would 
soon become manifest. The strong, obtaining a footing at 
all, would be sure to crush the weak, on the first conve- 
nient occasion, 
naroid-s Hence the reply of Harold to these proposals was, that 

he possessed the crown of England according to the will of 
the late king, and according to the suffrage of the nobles 
and people of the land. < >n these grounds he demanded 
that the duke and his followers should at once depart from 
the kingdom. That Harold declined the challenge to single 
combat because he remembered his broken vow, and that 
his own brother Gyrth urged, for thai reason, that he should 
nol oppose himself to William even in the field, are only 
portions of the Norman tale on this subject. No native 
authority makes any such report, though the king had his 
tries '\ en anong the Saxons. 

During the first fortnight after leaving their ships, the 
Normans ravaged the lands of Sussex and the neighbour- 
hood — lands of which the Godwin family were, for the most 
part, the owners. Harold hastened his measures, and joined 
the army at Hastings on the evening of the 13th of October. 
Nol much more than half the force known to be at his dis- 
posal had assembled ; and a body of Danish auxiliaries, 
sent to his assistance by the Danish king Svend, had im- 
bibed the feeling of their race in England, and refused to 
fight against the duke. Harold had hoped to surprise the 
Normans by an attack on their camp in the following night. 
But William heard at once of his rival, and knew that the 
advantage of delay would be wholly on the side of the 
English. Every hour would add to their numbers, and 
would add to the difficulty of providing for the wants of his 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 275 

own army, without bringing him the least additional support, B00K hi. 

He decided, accordingly, that the foemen should meet on 

the following day. 

During that night the Norman ecclesiastics administered 
the offices of religion to such as were disposed to attend 
to them. The duke partook of the eucharist. The Saxon 
camp, we are told — how truly we know not — presented a 
different scene. The night was there spent, it is said, in 
feasting, and carousing. We know that among the follow- 
ers of Harold were those who had been accustomed to camp 
life. They had many of them been engaged in hot wars with 
the "Welsh ; and at Stamford Bridge they had just tried 
their metal successfully against the bravest that the old 
home of these Normans could send against them. Harold 
and his army should, perhaps, have been less self-reliant. 
Certainly an undue fear of their enemies cannot be laid to 
their charge ; and those enemies well knew that the event 
only could declare what the result of meeting this new 
enemy would be. 

At length came the morning light of that memorable day The battle 
— the 14th of October, 1066. William addressed his chiefs 
in terms intended to satisfy them in regard to the justice 
of their cause, and to assure them of its success. While 
thus employed, a messenger, whose horse and person were 
covered with armour, rode up to say the time had come to 
arm. In placing his coat of mail over his head, the duke 
happened to turn the hind part before. He saw that the 
awkward incident was observed, and, to prevent unfavourable 
impressions, he said that so it had been with his fortune, the 
right thing came last, he had been duke, he should soon 
become king. 

William arranged his army in three divisions. The third 
division he commanded himself, and there his own banner 
waved. Concerning the manner in which the Saxons ac- 
quitted themselves on that day we know little or nothing 
from the Saxons themselves. The version of the conflict 
which has its place in all our histories, is wholly the Anglo- 
Norman version. Nevertheless, even through these sources, 
enough becomes known to make it evident that the coun- 



276 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B ^^, I 1 IL trymen of Alfred were not wanting in prowess on the field 
of Hastings, or in the strength which can endure as well 
as dare. 

The position chosen by Harold was on a moderately 
rising ground, for strictly speaking there are no hills near. 
His army was drawn out in a wedge form, with compact 
lines, protected by a wall of Bhields, and by strong palisades. 
The men of London, according to ancient usage, funned the 
guard of the king, and bore his standard. The nun of Kent, 
on the same ground claimed t<» be placed in front, and to 
strike the firsl blow. As the Normans advanced, Harold 
saw, from their equipment, their numbers, and the large 
proportion of cavalry, that treacherous reports had led him 
to underrate the strength of his enemies. But the usual 
Mar cries rose fearlessly, from Norman and Saxon alike, as 
the former commenced the onslaught. The great military 
bard Taillefer had prayed thai he might be allowed to strike 
down the firsl Englishman. Rushing in advance, he ac- 
complished his object. Bui the Saxons were instantly upon 
him, and the bold minstrel was the next among the slain. 
This daring adventure had inspirited the Normans. But it 
availed not. The line of the Saxons was not to be broken. 
Their steady pressure Bent disorder among the Norman in- 
fantry, and, at the same time, a portion of the Norman cav- 
alry fell into a concealed trench. The chief- among the 
invaders became alarmed. Many of them evinced the ut- 
most bravery. N» man was more conspicuous in urging 
the wavering to firmness than Odo, the martial bishop 
of Bayeux, brother to the duke. But the confusion con- 
tinued to increase. First the lefl wing, composed of Bre- 
ton- and mercenaries, fled. Next the third division, where 
the duke commanded, and where his banner was visible, 
was seen in retreat. Gyrth sent hi- spearthrough the horse 
on which William rode. Another was seized from the 
nearest knight. But so thick were the death strokes near 
the person of the duke, that a second horse, and a third, fell 
under him. In the lasl instance, the commander owed his 
rescue to the timely aid of the count Eustace. The living 
men gave out that the duke had fallen, and that all was lost. 



THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. 277 

But William flew to the quarter of the panic, removed his book hi. 

11, Chap. 1. 

helmet from his head, and called loudly on the fugitives to ■ 

rally, and to save themselves by brave deeds from an igno- 
minious destruction. This appeal was not in vain, and was 
most seasonable ; for by this time a large body of the Nor- 
mans found themselves in the rear of an advanced body of 
the English, and added a vigorous onset from that quarter, 
to the resistance presented by the duke in front. Of this 
division of the English, assailed thus from all sides, very 
few escaped. The Normans now renewed their attack on 
the main body. But the Saxon lines seemed invincible. At 
nine o'clock the signal for battle had been given. Through 
six hours this death strife had been protracted, and there 
was no sign of victory on cither side. The duke now re- 
membered the success of an early hour of the day, when 
chance drew some of the Saxons from their position. He 
resolved to attempt doing by stratagem, what had then 
been done without forecast. He arranged for the appar- 
ent flight of a large division. The unsuspecting Saxons 
rushed on the rear of their enemies, heaping taunt and 
sarcasm upon them with every blow. But presently the 
duke gave the signal to halt, and to form the lines. The 
Saxons now saw their error. The fate which had befallen the 
advanced division in the morning, now befel a much larger 
number in the evening. The loss thus sustained by the 
English was great — irretrievable ; but neither party would 
seem to have seen it to be so. Many extraordinary deeds 
were done by heroic Saxons when this dark hour of the day 
had come. But no names are mentioned. That honour 
was reserved by the Anglo-Norman writers for the distin- 
guished men of their own race. "William, it is said, had 
eagerly sought for Harold, and once fell on a bold Saxon 
thane, supposing he had found him. The thane beat in the 
helmet of his assailant, and would have changed the future 
of English history, had not the attendants of the commander 
come to his deliverance. Thus did hope and fear rock 
against each other through that live-long day. Even as the 
sun is going down, a body of cavaliers, with the brave count 
Eustace at their head, are seen flying in the direction of the 



278 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B ch.5 I i IL rova l standard ; and as the count bends towards the ear of 

the duke in passing to say, in a subdued voice, that retreat 

is unavoidable, the blow from a pursuing Saxon falls be- 
tween his shoulders, sends the blood from his mouth and nos- 
trils, and he sinks to the ground. It was this count Eustace 
who had saved the life of the duke in the morning. But to 
William, retreat was worse than death. He looked to the 
point where Harold's standard was yet seen, surrounded by 
the flower of his army. Were there no Normans left who 
could rush in there, and seize that ensign ? Some twenty 
men of rank volunteered to lead the way thither. The greater 
part of them perished. But their work was done. The 
archers had raised their bows higher than before. The fatal 
arrow pierced the eye of the king. His two faithful broth- 
ers, Gyrth and Leofwin, fell by his side. Soon only the dead 
or dying of king Harold's army were on the plain. As the 
darkness came once more to the quiet earth, it fell on thane 
and peasant, on ecclesiastics and nobles thickly strewed 
together. But they had done their best in defence of their 
own homeland. Among the armed combatants who there 
fell, were an English abbot and eleven of his monks. Eng- 
land is not to have another Saxon king — is never to see 
another Saxon army.* 

* Guil. Pictav. W. Malms. H. Huntingdon. Ordericus. Fl. Wigorn. 
Roman de Jlou. Chron Sax. These authorities are not all agreed in their 
descriptions of this memorable battle. The account in the text may, we 
think, be accepted as correct. ' How great, think you, must have been the 
slaughter of the conquered, when that of the conquerors is reported, upon 
the lowest estimate, to have exceeded ten thousand ? Oh, how vast a flood 
of human gore was poured out in that place where these unfortunates fell and 
were slain ! What dashing to pieces of arms, what shrieks of dying men ! 
In the contemplation of it our pen fails us.' — Chronicle of Battle Abbey, trans- 
lated by Marc Antony Lower, A.M. Ordericus makes the Norman loss 
15,000. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO PROPERTY. 

WILLIAM paused awhile after the victory at Hastings, chap. 2. 
expecting some signs of submission from the people, submission 
But the signs came not. He then ravaged several countries, English. 
and was afterwards laid up with sickness during some weeks 
near Canterbury. The English made no use of this occasion. 
It only served to show that the leadership necessary to any 
formidable resistance had ceased to exist. The Conqueror 
next took up his position at Berkhamstead, for the purpose 
of intercepting any communication that might be attempted 
between the north and south. At that place young Edgar, 
grandson of the Ironside, and heir, as we have seen, to the 
English throne, presented his submission. Stigand, arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, Eldred, archbishop of York, with 
many other persons of rank, followed this example. The 
Londoners had proclaimed and crowned Edgar as king; 
but, deserted and alone, they felt that resistance would be 
worse than useless. 

The followers of the Conqueror now became impatient coronation 
to see the English crown placed upon his brow. It was queror C(>n ' 
determined, accordingly, that the ceremony of his corona- 
tion should take place at Christmas. On that occasion the 
abbey church of Westminster was decorated as when the 
sovereigns of England were wont to be greeted there by the 
loyal acclamations of the ' best ' of the land. "William 
knew that his own ear was not to be thus greeted. Triple 
lines of soldiers fenced off the road between his camp and 
the minister. All the avenues immediately about the 
edifice were guarded by cavalry. Li the train of the duke 



280 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



B cha^ 2 IL f°^ owe( i two hundred and sixty Norman chiefs. "When 

Eldred, archbishop of York, put the question to those chiefs, 

and to the few Saxons present : ' Will ye have William 
duke of Normandy for your king ? ' the shout of the Nor- 
mans was so loud, that the horsemen in the street, suspect 
ing, or pretending to suspect, some treason, began to set fire 
to the neighbouring houses. The parties within the church, 
becoming in their turn alarmed, rushed nearly all into the 
open air. But a few trembling ecclesiastics remained, and 
received from the lips of the scarcely less trembling king, 
the pledge that he would govern the English people accord- 
ing to their own laws, and in all things as justly and hu- 
manely as the best of their kings had governed them.* 

wniiam's "William did not affect to take possession of the crown 

ground of -t 

throne the °^ England by the right of conquest. He claimed to be 
accepted as king in virtue of his relationship to Edward the 
Confessor, and according to the alleged will of that mon- 
arch. This pretension may have been invalid — absurd ; but 
nevertheless, it was on this pretension that William pro- 
fessed to ground his right, and not on the sword. In con- 
sonance with this policy, he came, according to his own lan- 
guage, not to subvert, but to uphold, the existing laws. It 
is true his claim had been resisted, and there were grave 
penalties awaiting those who had made that resistance. But 
William professed to distinguish between those who had 
taken part with the late usurper, and the nation at large, 
which, as he pretended, had not been a party to that pro- 
ceeding. Measures were soon taken to secure the names 
of all persons who had fought against him, or who had in 
any way aided or encouraged those who had so done.f And 
we know that the persons who might be comprehended 
under one or the other of these descriptions, would include 
nearly the whole nation. Still, a distinction was made, 
between those who had shown disaffection, and those who 
had not ; and, in effecting to restrict his penalties to the 

* Ordericus, lib. iv. c. i. Malms, lib. ill. Guil. Pictav. 205, 206. Eadmer, 
6. Brompton, 961. Guil. Newburg. 3. 

f Guil. Pictav. Madox's History of the Exchequer, folio. Dialogus de 
Scaccario. Ilale's History of the Common Lam, chap. 5. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO PROPERTY. 281 

former class, William claimed the credit of doino; only as book hi. 

1 . Chap. 2. 

any lawful sovereign would Lave done in the same cireum- 

stances. 

But it soon became manifest that the victory at Hastings Dispiace- 
had not subdued disaffection. New hostilities not only pre- sTxIms! the 
pared the way for new confiscations, but furnished pretexts 
for a more rigorous application of the general law of retri- 
bution. Rapacity, and the love of power, so conspicuous 
both in the king and his followers, disposed them, as such 
events arose, to look on the country more, and more as a con- 
quered country to be dealt with at their pleasure. William, 
indeed, never ceased to speak of his office as king of Eng- 
land as his by right and inheritance ; and this idea continued 
to the last to influence many of his proceedings. But when 
his passions were roused, or his followers become clamorous, 
his schemes of spoliation expanded, so as to evince little re- 
spect for law or custom. The Danes, as they had not joined 
the struggle between the Saxon and the Norman, were 
allowed generally to retain their possessions. But in less 
than twenty years, the Saxon landlord was displaced, over 
the greater part of the kingdom, by the Norman. Norman 
castles made their appearance in all parts of the country, 
and the strangers by whom they were garrisoned, became 
known among the natives by the name of the ' castle-men.' 

In carrying out this great scheme of plunder in our his- 
tory, the king himself set a fruitful example. He claimed, 
not only all the lands, but all the treasure and movables, of 
the former kings of England. He descended so far as to enrich 
himself by robbing churches of their ornaments, and by 
appropriating articles of rarity and value from the shops of 
tradesmen. From the accumulations thus made, William 
sent costly presents to the pope, in return for his blessing. 
Similar acknowledgments were made to churches in Nor- 
mandy, where many prayers had been offered for the success 
of his enterprise. What the king did in London, the barons, 
and many inferior men, did in many towns and cities.* 

The word manor is of Norman origin, and seems to have Distnbu- 

° J tion of 

manors. 
* Chron. Sax. 1066-1070. Simeon Dunelm. 200. Mat. West. Roger 
Wen do v. 



282 NORMALS AND ENGLISH. 

B ci?^, X * L been used to denote a considerable estate, with a house or 

mansion upon it as the residence of its owner. The crown 

lands recorded in the Domesday Book include more than 
1400 manors, besides other properties not fully described. 
The earl of Moretaine, the Conqueror's half-brother, be- 
came possessed of nearly 800 manors, spread over nineteen 
counties. The earl of Bretagne, who commanded the rear 
in the battle of Hastings, had 4-42. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, 
brother to William, had 439, which gave him authority in 
seventeen counties. The bishop of Coutance, who, in com- 
mon with Odo, was also a soldier, had 280. Roger de 
Bresli had 174 in Nottinghamshire. Ilbert de Laci had 164, 
chiefly in Yorkshire. William Perceval, the Conqueror's 
natural son, had 162. Robert de Sanford, 150. Roger de 
Laci, 116. Hugh de Montfort, more than 100. William 
de Warren had territorial allotments in Sussex, and in 
eleven other English counties.""' 

These instances are enough to suggest what the scheme 
of distribution was, which took place immediately after the 
Conquest. The lands seized by William were either crown 
lands, or those which Lad been in the possession of the most 
considerable families, such as the Godwins and the Alfgars 
of Mercia. From the other parts of the country, his follow- 
ers received such allotments as were deemed appropriate to 
their rank, or to their past services.f 

case of When Exeter was taken — for that city had dared to 

resist the Conqueror after the battle of Hastings — an inci- 
dent occurred which showed how much caprice and passion 

* Ellis's Introduction to Domesday, Ixxii. Brady's Introduction, 13. Hut- 
chins's Dissert, on Domesday Book, ii. 27, 49, 118. It is due to the Conqueror 
to state, that lie evidently had not in all cases power to restrain his followers 
from the work of destruction and pillage on which they were bent. It ap- 
peal's, also, from Domesday, that some men seized upon estates without his 
authority, and held them by no other title than their own will. These lands 
are described in the record as invasiones — denoting that they had been seized, 
and were retained, as above stated. — Ellis's Introduction, x. 

■j- ' Thus strangers were enriched with England's wealth, while her sons 
were iniquitously slain, or sent into hopeless exile into foreign lands. It is 
stated that the king himself received daily £1060 2s. 6§d. sterling money from 
the regular revenues in England alone, independently of presents, fines for 
offences, and many other matters which come into a royal treasury.' — Order- 
icus, bk. iv. c. 7. William added greatly to the sufferings of his tenants by 
farming his estates to the highest bidders. — Guil. Pictav. 208. Chron. Sax. 
Ordericus, iv. 7. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO PROPERTY. 283 

had to do with these proceedings. Brihtric, a rich Saxon book iil 

p . Chap. 2. 

of Devonshire, had been ambassador from king Edward to 

the count of Flanders. Matilda, then the unmarried daugh- 
ter of the connt of Flanders, now the queen of England, had 
cherished a passion for the Englishman, to which the latter, 
it is said, made no response. On the fall of Exeter, the 
time came for a distribution of estates in Devonshire, and 
for Matilda to be avenged on Brihtric. lie was seized by 
Normans while engaged in the consecration of a chapel on 
his own manor of Hanley, and thrust into prison at "Win- 
chester, where he died. The person of the delinquent being 
thus disposed of, the queen shared considerably in his 
estates.* 

Selden and Judge Hale affirm that no Englishman was opinions of 

° ° Selden and 

deprived of his possessions by the Conqueror simply on the Halc - 
ground of his being an Englishman.f This may be true ; 
but what was the nature of the pretexts which too often 
served as a covering for such proceedings on the part of the 
king himself, and, still more, on the part of his followers ? 
The church and abbey lands were generally undisturbed ; 
and for a while a few distinguished Saxons of both sexes, 
were allowed to retain possession of estates. But Eadric 
the Forester, who disputed the Norman sway in Hereford- 
shire, and along the Welsh border, seems to have been the 
only Saxon who, having taken arms against the invaders, 
was found in possession of his lands twenty years after the 
Conquest.:}: And from that time we discover no trace of 
men of wealth or position among the natives. In general, the 
English became tenants where they had been landlords, 
and the humbler classes passed, with the estates on which 
they had long dwelt, into the hands of the new masters. 
No thanks to the Normans, if the English were generally 
accepted as labourers and as tenants, and even on reason- 
able conditions. The land was of small value except on 
such terms. Domesday Booh shows that the men who cul- 

* Ellis's Introd. ii. 54. Thierry, bk. i. 353. Lapponberg's England under 
the Normans, 122, 123. 

f Selden, Notce Eadmer. Hale's Hist. Common Law, c. v. 
\ Lappenberg, 117. 



284 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



B cu3 2 IL ti vat ed and occupied tlie land after the Conquest, were much 
the same as before that event.* 

Feudal With this great change, in regard to the possessors of 

property, came another regarding the tenures on which. 
property should he held. Some learned men account feudal 
tenures as not older in England than the Conquest. Others 
insist that they were familiar to the Anglo-Saxons long 
before. Both these opinions, though the contrary of each 
other, have their measure of truth. f It is certain that some 
of the elements of the feudal system were not unknown 
among the Saxons and the Danes in this country before the 
Conquest.;}: But it was left to the Conqueror to extend that 
system to the whole kingdom, and to establish it definitely, 
after the Continental model. Under "William, all the hold- 
ers of land in England, became either tenants to the crown, 
or subtenants to those who were such; and the conditions 
of the holding — or the virtual rent to be paid — both by 
the tenant in chief, and by the subtenant, were the same. 
The lesser vassal owed to his lord, whatever his lord, as his 
greater vassal, owed to the king. In this manner, all the 
lands of England were legally vested in the king, and the 
uses of them only pertained to the subject. 

Knight scr- What we have ventured to call the virtual rent of the 

soccage. land was twofold. It consisted in what was known by the 
name of Tonight service and socca<j< . Knight service bound 
the tenant to supply the king with a certain military force 
when required. Soccage consisted in the obligation to ren- 
der other services, not military, to the landlord, such as 
ploughing his ground, or supplying his table, according to 
stipulation. It is supposed that many of the serfs were 
allowed by the Normans to cultivate .-mail portions of land, 
on certain conditions, and that this class rose by degrees, 
under the name of villeins, to have a permanent and legal 
interest in their lands in the nature of copyhold. The religious 
houses were exempt from the obligation to knight service, on 
the ground that the owners of such lands were men occupied 

* Ellis's Introd. cc. 11-14. 

f Judge Hale is disposed to date feudal tenures in England from the Con- 
quest. — Hist. Common Law, c. v. But Coke, Selden, Nathaniel Bacon, Tem- 
ple, Saltern, and the author of the Mirror date them much earlier. 

% See pp. 239-241. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO PEOPEETY. 285 

in religious duties, but in reality, we presume, on the ground book hi. 
1 -111! . -i. CnAP - 2 - 
that they were expected to keep large hospitality. 

England was thus covered with a great military network. Military 

The Normans became, what the English had never become, theNor - 

~ ' mans in 

a compact organization, a potent unity. This power was En s lan(1 - 
everywhere diffused, but lost nothing by diffusion. The 
isolation was apparent, not real. The word might be given 
at any moment, and armed men sprang up in all places 
under the standard of their respective leaders. AVhat the 
Tower of London became to the Conqueror, the fortresses 
with which the land was now studded became to the barons. 
Nor was this system, so readily established, of short dura- 
tion. It descends in its entireness to the sons of the first 
chiefs, and exerts a powerful influence on the institutions of 
this country for centuries to come. By this means the first 
Norman king had not less than 50,000 armed men always 
at his disposal.* 

In the wrongs which befel this country after the battle state of 
of Hastings, the householder m the town shared hardly bet- 
ter than the landholder in the country. The dwelling-place 
of the burgher, and the acres of the agriculturist, were seized 
in the same spirit. One effect of these proceedings was that 
many of the towns were almost depopulated. Those who 
plundered them scared away the people. Many suffered 
much from fire. In others, almost whole streets were pulled 
down to supply material for castle-building. Lincoln pos- 
sessed 1150 houses before the Conquest ; afterwards, 166 
were demolished to erect the castle, and 100 were without 
inhabitants. Norwich was a wealthy city. In the time of 
Edward the Confessor it included 1320 houses, and soon 
after the Norman ascendency nearly half that number had 
disappeared. Chester, Derby, and York, all suffered much 
on the same scale, and Oxford more than any one of them. 
Many of the spoliators of the first generation were low men, 
whose coarse insolence was often more difficult to bear than 
their rapacity and oppression. f 

* Ordericus, lib. v. c. 1, 7. Reeve's History of English Law, i. c. 2. 

f ' Ignorant upstarts, driven almost mad by their sudden elevation, won- 
dered how they arrived at such a pitch of power, and thought that they might 
do whatever they chose.' — Ordericus, iv. c. 8. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO TIIE PEOPLE. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 3. 

How the 

Battle of 

came to lio 
so decisive. 



FT has sometimes been accounted strange that a single 
-*- battle should have sufficed to transfer a great kingdom 
into wholly new hands. But the event admits of explana- 
tion. The trial of strength, as we have seen, was not so 
much between Normandy and England, as "between Nor- 
mandy and "Wessex. Northumbria was in disorder and 
weakness. Mercia stood aloof. The first had little 
power to render assistance ; the second happened to be 
in weak hands, and seems to have looked with jealousy 
on the elevation of the Godwins in the person of Harold. 
It should be remembered, moreover, that England at that 
time possessed few places of strength. It had castles, but 
they were rarely seen, and were nowhere formidable. Some 
of its cities had walls and gates. But in general they were 
open to assault from any quarter. Hence an enemy as- 
cendant in the field, might soon become ascendant every- 
where. The nation did not at that time possess the wealth 
necessary to guard itelf effectually from danger cither upon 
the land or the deep. It had to provide for its safety on 
both elements, and for centuries had found great difficulty 
in so doing. It should be borne in mind, also, that England 
at that juncture was not more wanting in places of great 
strength, than in great men to command them. Earl "Wal- 
theof, son of the late veteran soldier Siward, was, like his 
sire, both strong and brave, and, as we may believe, devout 
and honest. But that is nearly all we know of him. If 
the north was to act at all, it was through him. But he does 
not seem to have been a man of real power. The young 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 287 

earls Edwin and Morcar, had Mercia in their hands, but B ° 0K nt 

' , Chap. 8. 

evidently knew not how to use it. Some other Saxon 

names come to the surface. But, in fact, Harold was the 
only man possessing the combination of civil prudence and 
military capacity demanded by the crisis. No such man 
survived the battle of Hastings. The Dane, as we have 
seen, took no part against the Norman ; and even the clergy 
were in a great degree quiescent rather than active. Harold 
made little effort to secure the adhesion of the priesthood. 
Some tonsured men fought by his side in his last battle ; but 
William came with the pope's benediction, and the con- 
science of ecclesiastics in those days was an artificial, not a 
natural, conscience. When all these points are considered, 
it must cease to be surprising that so great a battle, so pro- 
tracted and so destructive as took place at Hastings, should 
have led to results so decisive. 

Bat it would be a great mistake to suppose that the Eng- subsequent 
lish became at once passive under the yoke imposed on theEngHsh! 
them. Copsi, earl of Northumberland, made his terms 
with the Conqueror. But his people accounted those terms 
more selfish than patriotic, and the earl perished as a victim 
of their resentment.* This happened in the spring of 1067. 
In the course of the summer there were other signs of in- 
quietude. As the winter came on, the asj>ect of affairs was 
so little satisfactory, that William, who was in Normandy, 
embarked in foul December weather, for the purpose of 
checking the disorders in his new dominions. 

Exeter was a fortified city, and a place of considerable siege of 
trade and wealth. Britons and Saxons had long dwelt 
together within its walls, and leading men of both races 
were resident in its neighborhood. The citizens had not 
opened their gates to a Norman, and were not disposed to ac- 
knowledge the authority of that race. William approached, 
demanding the surrender of the place, and that the citi- 
zens should take the oath of allegiance. ' We are not pre- 
pared to do either,' was the answer ; ' we can only promise 
to pay tribute to the king now, as we have paid it in past 
time.' William replied that he had not been wont to ac- 

* Guil. Pictav. Ordericus, lib. iv. c. 3. 



288 



NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 



B ch.5 3 11 ' ce P^ °^ subjects on such terms, and began to make prepara- 
tions for an assault. At this point some of the more consid- 
erable of the inhabitants came out to meet him, and took 
upon them to negotiate for his admission into the place, 
giving hostages for the performance of their promise. But, 
on coming near the city gate, "William found that the citi- 
zens had loudly denounced the timid policy of those who had 
presumed to speak for them, and were prepared to resist his 
entrance. The Conqueror gave orders that the eyes of one 
of the hostages should be torn out in front of the nearest 
gate. The deed was clone, but the citizens were firm. The 
place could not be taken by storm ; and it was not until 
the eighteenth day of the siege, when the walls had been 
undermined, that the inhabitants opened the gates. Wil- 
liam, with the uncertainty which attended his distribution 
of penalties, treated the people leniently."* 

On his visit to Normandy, in the spring of 10G7, the 
Conqueror took with him the chief Saxon nobles, partly to 
add splendour to his retinue, and partly to secure them from 
intriguing against him during his absence. On their return 
these persons were filled with indignation as they saw the 
oppressions to which their countrymen were subject. The 
earls Edwin, Morcar and Gospatric, the three youthful sons 
of the late king Harold, Blithwallon, king of North Wales, 
and others of less note, began to form plans in the hope of 
expelling the Normans.f It is true, this confederacy led to 
nothing important. But such restlessness on the surface 
bespeaks a deeper restlessness beneath. 

The north of England, from the Humber to the Tyne, 
was a. sea of disaffection. Over that district, the town, the 
forest, the marsh — every place that could be used as a for- 
tress — was transformed to that purpose. The hardy men 
who took possession of such places, made so light of their 
privations, that the Normans spoke of them as savages. 
But they were led by men who had the noblest Saxon blood 
in their veins. :{: 

In the early part of 10G9, the king sent Robert of Co- 



Ilostilo 
movement 
of the 

Saxon 
nobles. 



State of 
the north 



Insurrec- 
tion at 
Durham. 



* Chron. Sax. Ordericus, lib. iv. c. 4. 

% Chron. Sax. Ordericus, lib. iv. c. 



| Ibid. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 289 

mines to administer the law in the county of Durham, book ih 

Chap. 3. 



Robert, in defiance of the prudent counsel of the bishop, 
flaunted the Norman banner through the town, and gave 
such licence to the armed men who attended him, that 
blood was shed, and more than one ecclesiastic was killed. 
On the next night, the fire-signal passed from village to 
village, and by day-break a multitude of men had covertly 
flocked together under the walls of the city. The gates 
were no sooner open, than the crowd from the country 
rushed in, and joined the townsmen in the cry for ven- 
geance. Robert was called from his bed in the bishop's 
palace. The Normans used that edifice as a fortress, and 
defended themselves obstinately. Rut every man perished, 
cither by the sword, or by the fire which the assailants ap- 
plied to the building. 

About the same time, Robert Fitz-Richard, another dis- Disturb- 
tinguished Norman, was slain, with many of his followers, west— in- 
In (Shropshire there was a similar outbreak under Ladnc the Danes. 
the Forester. In the west, Harold's sons ravaged the coast 
with armed bands from Ireland, and the insurgent Saxons 
meditated an attack on Exeter : and, to add to all these 
sources of inquietude, a considerable Danish force came to 
the assistance of the natives.* 

In all these movements there was a want of the larire- Wantof 

o concert 

ness and concert necessary to success. Misfortune seemed En°ii!b the 
to attend them. The right thing rarely happened at the 
right time. But there is enough in them to show, that if 
England remained the bondsman of the Norman, it was 
more from the want of men competent to deal with their 
affairs, than from the want of sound national feeling. f 

"William now resolved that these disturbances should, if Devastation 
possible, be brought to an end. His first object was to buy qaerorin 
off the leader of the Danes, in which he succeeded. His next 
step was to reduce the north of England, which had shown 
so little love to him, and given him so much trouble, to a 
wilderness. For this purpose he issued orders that all food, 
and all utensils for the preparation of food, that came in 
the way of his army, should be destroyed. The famine thus 

* Ordericus, lib, iv. c. 4, 5. \ Hist. Reg. lib. iii. 

Vol. I.— 19 



290 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



BOOK 
Chap. 



X 8 IL brought on converted many of the wretched people into can 
— nibals, and, according to Norman writers, must have swept 
awaj a hundred thousand lives ! The armed men were 
chased into every imaginable retreat, the unarmed every- 
where perished from hunger or the sword. The dead lay 
unburied, and pestilence came in the track of want. Vil- 
lages and towns disappeared, not to rise again for genera- 
tions to come. Malmesbury, writing some seventy years 
later, says, no stranger can pass through the country with- 
out lamentation, on seeing magnificent cities, and towers 
threatening heaven in their loftiness, laid in ruin, and such 
desolation and barrenness everywhere, that if any old 
inhabitant remained in the place, he knew it no longer.* 
The land of no man was safe, not even the church lands of 
Beverley and Durham. Special vengeance fell on the es- 
tates of Edwin, Morcar, "Walthcof, and Maerlesweyne, the 
only Saxons from whom future opposition might be appre- 
hended." 
Wiliiam-s William had become more deeply convinced than ever 

ultimate t * ^ 

policy. f] ia t the position which he had gained by the sword could 
be made secure only by such means. His followers did 
what they could to strengthen that conviction. It favoured 
their policy, which was to account the rights of the natives 
as extinct, to garrison the whole country, and to divide it as 
a spoil between them. 

Many of the more warlike among the English now fled 
westward, and migrated from the ports of Wales to the con- 
tinent, with their arms in their hands, soliciting help for 
their country or offering their services to foreign princes. 
One body of such men, under the command of Siward, a 
soldier of reputation in Gloucestershire, extended their 
travels as far as Sicily, where they were enrolled in the 
army of the Emperor Alexis, under the name of the axe- 
hearers. It happened, too, that when the Normans, under 
Robert Guiscard, invaded the neighbouring province of 
Apulia, these English axe-bearers were the men in the front 
of the imperial army to meet them. The Englishmen made 
good use of the occasion. Guiscard was defeated: and the 

* Lib. iv. c. 5. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 291 

emperor built a town in Ionia for the accommodation of his B £°^, I ^ 1, 

Anglo-Saxon auxiliaries. Subsequently, Alexis ' recalled ' 

them to the imperial city, and committed to their charge 
his principal palace, and his royal treasure. In this way 
the Anglo-Saxons settled in Ionia, they and their posterity 
becoming faithfully attached to the holy empire, and having 
gained great honour in Thrace, continue,' says Odericus, 
' to the present clay beloved by the emperor, senate, and 
people.' * 

On the suppression of the insurrection in the north, the Saxon 
William knew that the time had come when it would be ° ' 
safe to act more in accordance with the wishes of his adhe- 
rents, if not with his own, and he did so. We have seen 
something of the freedom with which the property of the 
country was seized and distributed. But the English people 
were not only impoverished, they were excluded from all 
offices, except the lowest, both in church and state. Wil- 
liam alleged that they were not to be trusted. He had tried 
them, and found them faithless. He was not likely to see 
that the blame in this matter rested more with himself than 
M r ith the objects of his censure. It is hard to confide in 
the unprincipled — harder still to confide in the injured. 
Certainly the king could not say that the Saxon clergy had 
betrayed him. If fault attached to them, it had been on 
the side of a too ready submission to his will. But their 
subservience did not suffice to protect them against his 
rapacity and injustice. He robbed their churches without 
scruple. He removed their dignitaries simply at his pleas- 
ure. Pretexts were soon found for deposing Stigand from 
the see of Canterbury, and his treasures were divided 
between the queen, the king, and his brother, bishop Odo, 
an ecclesiastic then doing military service at Dover. The 
bishops of Wells and Sherborne were Frenchmen, and were 
allowed to retain their prelacies. Alexander, bishop of 
Lincoln ; Egalmar, bishop of East Anglia ; and Egelric, 
bishop of Sussex, were all Saxons, and all were deprived of 
their office and possessions without even the pretence of 
their having done anything to warrant such a proceeding. 

* Ordericus, lib iv. c. 3. Fordun, 698. Thierry, ii. 2, 3. 



292 NORMALS AND ENGLISH. 

B goK iii. Egelwin, bisliop of Durham, shared the same fate, and his 

last act before going into exile, was to pronounce sentence 

of excommunication against the men who were daily plun- 
dering the church and oppressing the people.* Eldred, the 
archbishop of York, did not long survive the ceremony of 
crowning the new king, and his successor was of course a 
Norman. A man named Remi, of Feehamp, had furnished 
the Conqueror with sixty boats, and in payment for this ser- 
vice he was first presented to the see of Dorchester, and 
afterwards to that of Lincoln. 

This last instance of promotion is only a sample of the 
kind of traffic which obtained everywhere in this subju- 
gated country. For William had gathered about him, not 
only a host of nobles and knights, with their retainers, but 
a large body of ecclesiastical adventurers, who had learnt 
to look on any contribution towards the expedition against 
England as a good investment. The necessity of providing 
for these priestly cormorants was hardly less imperative than 
the need of providing for the military class. 
Anglo The instance of royal patronage in the Anglo-Norman 

doigy. church least open to exception, was the promotion of Lan- 
franc to the see of Canterbury. Lanfranc made some good 
appointments, and some that were very bad — the latter 
being made probably under bad influence. The Anglo- 
Saxon clergy at that time were not men of much culture. 
But there was not a body of men of more piety, or of more 
intelligence, in any Teutonic nation of that age. Slight as 
their learning may seem to have been, it was much greater 
than was possessed by such of the Norman clergy before the 
Conquest as can be shown to have been natives of Nor- 
mandy. The pretence, accordingly, that the Anglo-Saxon 
clergy were removed as incompetent, is manifestly false. 
The plea that they were wanting in piety, as coming from 
such a quarter, was a piece of sheer hypocrisy. The mar- 
tial prelates who came in with the Conquest were gazed 
upon with wonder by the Anglo-Saxon priesthood, and were 
a sore offence to their simple faith. Their eyes had never 
seen the like before. To draw a sword in the presence of 

* Matt. West. an. 1070. Wendorer, ad an. 



THE CONQUEST 1ST ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 293 

an Anglo-Saxon bishop was to incur a fine as heavy as if B ch^I L 
it had been drawn in the presence of a king. By the new 
clergy, the monks were generally expelled from their an- 
cient homes near the cathedrals. Robert of Limoges, who 
became bishop of Lincoln, doomed the monks of Coventry 
to the poorest fare, lest the good condition of their flesh 
should prompt them to insubordination. The books also, 
to be accessible to them, were to be few in number, and 
such as were not likely to give them high notions. To test 
the humility of this ill-fated fraternity, the bishop seized 
their horses, robbed them of their furniture, and forcing 
his way into their dormitory, broke open their coffers, and 
carried away all he found there.* The lust of the bishop of 
Hereford cost him his life. He fell by the hand of a woman 
to whom he would have done violence.f While some 
became thus notoriously impure, others became as notori- 
ously gluttonous. In short, covetousness and sensuality 
are said to have been in greater excess among the foreign 
ecclesiastics, than among the foreign soldiers. Of course, 
as we have intimated, there were' exceptions to this course 
of things, but such was the general complexion of the 
change now introduced. :{: 

Under William Rufus, every thing in the church became 
only more and more venal. Henry the First placed a con- 
siderable check on these abuses ; but during the reign of 
Stephen, the confusion and lawlessness which prevailed, 
were such as the country had not witnessed since the dark- 
est times in the history of the Danish invasions. 

It is not easy to discover the real condition of the labour- ^oTpopu- 
ing class in the country, or of the artisan class in the towns, latlon " 
during this period. Information becomes more available 

* Anglia Sacra, 455. Lanfranci, Opera 31. Knyghton, 2352. 

f Knyghton, 2348. 

\ Wendover, a.d. 108*7. Treheric, the abbot of St. Albans, chose to retire 
with his monks from that place, rather than continue on the conditions im- 
posed by the Conqueror. Lanfranc gave the abbey, as a matter of course, to 
a Frenchman. But the man was of low origin and mean attainments, and the 
monks introduced by him, who were mostly his relations, were not only 
grossly ignorant, but addicted to vices said to be too infamous to be described. 
— Matt. Paris, Vitai Abbat. 51. At Christmas, says an old historian, William 
kept his court at Gloucester, and gave bishoprics to his three chaplains — Lon- 
don to Maurice, Norwich to William, and Chester to Robert. 



294 NOEMANS AND ENGLISH. 

^h^." 1 ' on tn * s sllD Ject as we descend to the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries. But there is no room to doubt that in 
this earlier time the agricultural labour of the country was 
performed largely by men in the condition ■ of serfs or 
slaves ; while those who possessed lands as tenants, were 
generally bound to render services, not unfrequently of a 
menial description, to their landlords, either in person or by 
substitute. 

Serfs. The condition common to the serf population was, that 

they could acquire no right to property, and that they might 
be sold with the land, or separated from it, according to the 
will of their owners. Persons of this class were sometimes 
employed in domestic service, and were sometimes allowed 
to cultivate a few acres of ground for themselves. But these 
circumstances did not affect their condition as slaves. Be- 
fore the Conquest, slaves consisted of such persons born as 
slaves, or who had been made from being captives 
taken in war. Often the chief, or the only, spoil to be real- 
ized in such enterprises, was of this nature. So English 
slaves became common in the families of Scotland, and 
Scotch slaves in the families of England. So it was along 
the "Welsh border. But the Conquest, by putting an end 
comparatively to those border wars, diminished the supply 
of slaves. We have no reason to think that any English- 
man became a slave in England after the Conquest other- 
wise than by birth, or by his own act. Ilard, no doubt, 
was the condition of this class of persons. But in those 
days there was no poor-law. Every holder of slaves was 
accounted responsible for their conduct, and for his own 
care of them. His own interest would dispose him to regu- 
late their employment, and to house and clothe, and feed 
them, so as to be able to use them as healthy instruments 
of labour. Not a few of them were better provided for than 
they would have been had they been left to themselves ; 
though the little we know concerning the dwellings, the fur- 
niture, and the clothing of the population a degree above 
the serf, suggest no pleasant conclusion in regard to the 
comforts in these respects of the humbler classes generally. 
Some lords, and still more those who acted for them, would 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 295 

often, we fear, be hard masters ; but there would be many book in. 

checks upon such tendencies, and not the least was the con- 

stant protest against them on the part of the monasteries, 
in their frequent manumission, and generally humane treat- 
ment, of their bondsmen. 

In the twelfth century there was a great increase of the f c r n e a e nt8 
free tenants — men who sowed for their lord in the sowing 
season, and reaped for him in the reaping season, either in 
person or by deputy, but whose services of this kind were 
defined and settled, and who were otherwise free. The 
extensive lands of Battle Abbey were generally held on this 
tenure. Townsmen and countrymen stood in a relation of 
this sort to that establishment. In all accounts of English 
property, from the twelfth century downwards, there is a 
careful mention of the number of persons of this description 
connected with it. Fish, bread, and beer are mentioned 
as allowed to the serf. He might also taste his lord's mut- 
ton, but it was only on certain days.* 

While the mass of the population settled gradually into 
a life of this description, there were those who could not 
submit to it. Men of courage, skilled in the use of fire- 
arms, fled to the fens and forests, formed themselves into 
companies, and were bold and ingenious in levying contri- 
butions on the ISTorman, as the Norman had levied them on 
the Saxon. By these outlaws, who beset all the public 
ways, the invaders were often relieved of their ill-gotten 
treasures, and their bodies left to be buried by such of their 
own race as had survived them. So long as hostilities could 
be sustained even on this scale, there were men who could 
dream of better days. 

The great gathering place to spirits of this order was the The con- 
Isle of Ely. To the marsh and reed lands of that part of the at E 'y- 
kingdom, many of the fugitive Saxons fled, as affording 
them their best means of safety. What the mountains 
were to the Welsh, these fen lands were to the Saxons of 
East Anglia, and of some other districts. The Isle of Ely, 

* Chronicle of Battle Abbey. The name of ' villein ' was applied to those 
whom we have thus ventured to describe as free tenants : their condition was 
at a wide remove from that of the serf. Eden's State of the Poor, bk. i. c. 1. 



296 2s T OKMA2sS AND ENGLISH. 

B c°f 3 IL * n consec l uence ) became known among the natives by the 

name of the Camp of Refuge. Among those who fled 

thither there were some men of the highest rank — such as 
Stigand, the late archbishop of Canterbury ; Egelwin, the 
late bishop of Durham ; and the earls Edwin and Morcar. 
The bishops returned thither from their exile in Scotland ; 
and the earls, escaping from their durance at court, sought 
an asylum in that quarter, in the hope that the Saxon arm 
might still prove strong enough for its own deliverance.* 

Fate of the But in Ely Morcar listened a third time to the crafty 

Alfgars. J . J 

overtures of William. He had scarcely left the island, 
when the snare into which he had fallen became manifest. 
He was seized and placed in irons. It was the lot of Mor- 
car to look through the gratings of his Norman prison long 
enough to see a generation pass away.f Edwin, whose 
affection for his brother was ardent, perished in his attempt 
to avenge and liberate him. Two traitors conspired to 
betray him. He died defending himself with much heroism 
against great odds. His head was sent as a trophy to the 
king. Lucy, a sister of the earls, survived them. Her fate 
may be taken as an instance of that which awaited not a 
few Saxon women in her circumstances. She was com- 
pelled to marry one of the race who had become known to 
her only as the plunderers and murderers of her nearest kin- 
dred.:}: 

Ives Taille-bois, to whom this lady was assigned, fixed 
his residence on a portion of the ample domains which thus 
fell to him near Ely. The accounts given of this man de- 
pict him as coarse, brutal, fiendish — oppressing, torturing, 
and destroying the people about him, and often without 
any apparent cause beyond the pleasure which he seemed 
to find in such employment. Such was the husband given 
to the daughter of the once powerful earl Alfgar. Not far 
from Taille-bois's residence was a colony of Saxon monks, 
from the neighbouring abbey of Croyland. His conduct 

* Chron. Sax. a.d. 1011. Anglia Sacra, ii. 610. Wcndover, a.d. 1070. 

\ Chron. Sax. a.d. 1087. 

\ Ordericus, lib. iy. c. 4, 7. The king affected great sorrow when the 
head of earl Edwin was brought to him. He gave command on his death-bed 
for the liberation of Morcar, but Rufus did not heed the injunction. — Chron. 
Sax. a.d. 1087. Monast. Anglic, i. 306. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS KELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 297 

towards those defenceless men was atrocious. Everything book in. 
they could do to appease his monster passions was done, 
but in vain. At length they left the place, shaking off the 
dust of their feet against their oppressor.* Taille-bois took 
possession of the building, and of the lands belonging to it, 
and gave them to a company of monks whom he imported 
from his native town in Anjou. The abbot of Croyland 
laid this whole case before the king and his council. But 
the expelled monks were Saxons, the abbot chanced to be 
a Saxon, and the suit was disregarded.f 

It was in those fen countries that Hereward, the most Hereward 
famous among the earlier Saxon outlaws, distinguished him- the outlaw, 
self. Hereward was the son of Leofric, lord of Bourne in 
Lincolnshire. He had been disinherited by the Normans. 
But he was not disposed to submit to the spoliation. Call- 
ing his kinsmen and friends together, he dislodged the new 
occupants of his lands, and defended them bravely against 
the ' castle-men ' in his neighbourhood. The natives ap- 
plauded his achievements, sang ballads in his praise, often 
in the ears of the Normans, who spoke French, but knew 
little of English. 

Not far from the lands of Hereward was the abbey of 
Croyland, and the Isles of Ely and Thorney — the seat of the 
Camp of Hefuge. The fugitives in that camp invited Here- 
ward to become their leader. For this purpose he was in- 
vested with due military rank, according to the forms of 
that age. It was at this juncture that a Norman abbot, 
named Torauld, was sent to take charge of the abbey of 
Peterborough. This ecclesiastic began his journey towards 
Peterborough under a strong military escort. But Hereward 
and his followers visited the monastery before him ; and 
finding that the monks were not likely to resist their new 
superior, the outlaw seized all the valuables that could be 
discovered, and bore them to his camp4 

Taille-bois, now Viscount Spalding, invited Torauld to 

* Wendover, a.d 10*70. 

f Ingulph. Hist. Croy. 902. Wendover, a.d. 10S5. 

\ Chron. Sax. a.d. 1070. Wendover. Ingulph. 899 et seq. Chronicon 
Anr/licc Petriburgense. 



298 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



Death of 
Waltheof, 
the last 
Saxoa 
noble. 



B chap 3 IL J om ^^ m * n an expedition against Hereward. The timid 

policy of the abbot and his men-at-arms ended in their being 

surprised and taken prisoners. The ransom of the ecclesias- 
tic came as a welcome contribution to the exchequer of the 
camp. The Normans now made a grand effort against the 
fastness of the Saxons in Ely. A pathway — half bridge, 
half road — was constructed over marsh, and reeds, and lake, 
so as to reach the shore of the island. Taille-bois, who, like 
all other men of his sort, had more faith in a devil than in 
a divinity, bid a famous witch ascend a tower raised by his 
workmen, and hurl her incantations thence against the 
Saxons. Hereward, little moved by such terrors, set fire 
to the reeds and dry materials of the place, which brought 
destruction on the sorceress, and on many of the Normans 
as they were advancing to the attack under her protection. 
After months of resistance — resistance fertile in stratagem 
and in displays of bravery — certain monks, weary of their 
state of inquietude and privation, apprised the Normans of 
a secret path to their retreat. I3y the treachery of those 
men of peace a thousand Saxon lives were sacrificed. But 
Hereward escaped, and lived to gladden the heart of many 
a Saxon by his successes.* 

The destruction or dispersion of the men who formed 
the Camp of Refuge belongs to the year 1071. One Saxon 
layman only then remained as a man of place and power. 
This man was the earl "Waltheof. "Waltheof had made his 
peace with the king, and "William had given this chief his 
niece Judith in marriage. In 1074, Robert, earl of Here- 
ford, and other discontented Normans, conspired against 
"William, during his occupation with an unsettled state of his 
affairs in Normandy. The secret was disclosed to "Wal- 
theof, in the hope of securing his adherence. Waltheof 
declined being a party to the plot, but promised not to 
betray the confidence which had been reposed in him 
by divulging it. He was afterwards accused of having 

* Wendover says that 'Hereward, so long as he lived, practised all sorts 
of stratagems against king William.' — a.d. 1071. The same writer adds, that 
the construction in the marshes ' is called by the people of the province to 
this day, Hereward's fort.' The Saxon Chronicle describes the bridge con- 
structed by the king to reach the Isle of Ely as two miles in length. — a.d. 1071. 
Contin. Ingulf, 125. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS KELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 299 

been privy to these proceedings, and of having invited the B ££5 ^ 

Danes to aid the conspirators. The latter point in this 

charge was probably ill-founded. In the failure of all other 
evidence, his Norman wife became his accuser. He was 
condemned, and the parties who were coveting his large es- 
tates became possessed of them. But during twelve months 
his judges were divided concerning the sentence that should 
be pronounced upon him — whether the loss of his head, 
as proper to a mere Saxon rebel, or imprisonment only, the 
heaviest punishment that could be inflicted on a Norman 
noble. In the end, the iniquitous decision was, that the 
rank which would have served him as a Norman should 
not serve him as an Englishman. He was beheaded, in a 
suburb of "Winchester, early in the morning, and almost 
secretly, for fear of the people. The Saxons mourned him as 
a patriot and a saint. His body was first laid beneath a 
cross-road. It was afterwards interred at Croyland. Dur- 
ing many generations the English made pilgrimages to his 
tomb, and were persuaded that miracles had been wrought 
there. The Norman ecclesiastics often sneered at these devo- 
tions of the people, and derided them as an imbecile attempt 
to convert a traitor into a martyr.* 

It is probable that there was a time when William 
meant to have spared the life of "Waltheof. But his conduct 
toward the Saxon nobles generally, seems to have been in- 
tended to secure to himself the advantage of an apparent 
moderation, while in reality the doom awaiting his victims 
was only postponed. There were many things in respect to 
which this bad man had learnt to account slowness as sure- 
ness. 

"William attempted to dispose of Judith a second time condition 
in marriage ; but the man was lame, and she resisted the women. 11 
choice. "Whereupon, she was stripped of her possessions, 
and in the poverty and neglect to which she was reduced, 
the Saxons saw the just punishment of her evil deed. This 
arbitrary disposal of women was a Norman custom — to 
English females of the better class it was the source of in- 

* Ordericus, lib. iv. c. 7, 14, 15. Malms, lib. iii. Wendover, a.d. 1075. 
Ingulf, Croy. 903. Fordun, iii. 510. 



300 



NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 3. 



Last form 
of Saxon 
resistance. 



Change, in 
the feeling 
of the 
English in 
regard to 
law and 
govern- 
ment. 



calculable suffering. The stipulations of the Norman adven- 
turers had respect to women as well as to estates. 

When the last Saxon chief was disposed of at Winches- 
ter, the Normans had little to fear from the natives in the 
open field.* Mention is made, indeed, some sixty years 
later, of a conspiracy to massacre the Normans throughout 
all England on a given day and hour. The secret is said 
to have transpired, as usual, through the confessional. 
Many perished, but the leaders escaped. It may be that 
there was a Saxon conspiracy in 1127, but it appears to 
have been greatly magnified by the fears, or more probably 
by the policy, of the Normans.f The Saxon Chronicle, 
William of Malmesbury, and other writers, who were most 
likely to have recorded such an event, are silent concerning 
it. Tt' there was anything approaching to a wide organiza- 
tion against the invaders at that time, it is to be marked as 
the only movement of that nature after the dispersion of 
the camp at Ely. Subsequently to that dispersion, the only 
form in which the Normans might apprehend danger, was 
when travelling alone, or in small companies, especially in 
the north of England. When their path chanced to lie 
through the forest, along the unfrequented road, or across 
the marsh or the mountain, it became them to be watchful. 
William had converted Yorkshire into a desert ; but in so 
doing he had done less to awaken loyalty, than to create 
a home for the outlaw. During two centuries from that 
time, no Norman king ventured into those parts without the 
safeguard of an army. 

It was the natural effect of the Conquest, that men 
should learn to see the spirit of the patriot in the deeds of 
such men. Life spent in watching to seize the persons and 
the substance of the castle-men as a prey, came to be re- 
garded as brave and virtuous. The orders of the govern- 
ment were, that such bands should be hunted down as 
wolves. But multitudes who were themselves submissive, 
applauded in their heart the men who were bold enough to 
defy the oppressor. The law might denounce such men as 
robbers, murderers, and traitors, but it availed nothing — 



* Ordericus, lib. iv. c. 3, 4. f Ordericus, 912. Thierry, bk. vii. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 301 

the people did not speak of them in such terms. No ballads book n* 

were so popular as those which described the feats of forest- 

men in capturing portly abbots and wealthy prelates, bold 
knights and proud nobles, and as replenishing their coffers 
by the ransom. In the popular feeling, high honour was 
awarded to the adventurous spirits who shared among them 
the spoils of the neighbouring baron without the leave of 
his retainers, or fed on the king's venison in defiance of the 
king's laws. Rich was the glee with which they told of 
the merry freebooter, how he eluded the horsemen of the 
sheriff, wormed out his secret when most vain of his skill in 
concealing it, and caught him when least suspicious in his 
own snare. So it came to pass that men were accounted 
the purest lovers of their country who were the boldest in 
resisting its authorities. When injustice comes into the 
place of justice, it is natural that the sense of duty should 
thus change. The first Norman king, as we all know, 
cleared the soil of Hampshire of its inhabitants over a space 
of thirty miles, to create his great deer forest ; and if he did 
not punish a violation of his forest laws with death, it was 
from no feeling of humanity, but because he accounted the 
loss of eyes or limbs a more protracted, admonitory, and ter- 
rible punishment than hanging. The wild king, says the 
old chronicler, loved wild beasts as though he had been the 
father of them.* 

The successors of Hereward in East Anglia and beyond 
the Humber, were never men in a condition to be allowed 
to hope that it would ever be in their power to oppose any 
really formidable resistance to the rule of the Norman. 
They were simply men, for the most part, whom lawlessness 
had forced into lawlessness. But considerable bands of such 
men kept their footing in those districts for many genera- 
tions. To rob the Normans was to spoil the Egyptians, 
nothing more.f 

* Wendov. ad an. 1086. 

f The forests in the province of York were the haunt of a numerous band 
of this description, who had for their chief, or prince (as the original history 
expresses it), a man named Swan. In the central parts of the kingdom also, 
and near London, even under the walls of the Norman castles, various bodies 
of such men existed. They consisted (say the old writers) of men who, re- 
jecting slavery to the last, made the desert their asylum. — Thierry, bk. v. 
Hist. Monas. Selebiensis apvd Bibliotli. Labbcei, 603. 



302 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B ch^." l Nor were the western sides of the Yorkshire hills with- 
cu^bl^" out tne s ig ns °f slIcn popular feeling any more than the 
lawl° ut " eastern. Ballads have perpetuated the memory of Adam 
Bel, of Clym of the Clough (Clement of the Valley), and of 
William Cloudesley, as men who in those parts became 
heroes, in the popular estimation, by becoming outlaws. 
These men were all natives of Cumberland. They had 
offended against the Norman chase laws. By so doing they 
had forfeited the protection of all law. Sharing in common 
in this alleged crime, and in its consequences, they bound 
themselves to be one in all things. Thus solemnly pledged, 
they betook them to the forest of Inglewood, or English- 
wood, which lay between Penrith and Carlisle. They baffled 
their persecutors, and made themselves formidable. In the 
view of the people, they were bold and generous men, pre- 
pared to brave all things, so they might be free, leaving it 
to others to brave nothing, and to be slaves. 

Cloudesley had a wife and children in Carlisle. Bel 
and Clym had no such ties. After long absence, the mar- 
ried man spoke of longing for one more sight of those dear 
to him. His companions warned him of danger, but with- 
out effect. Cloudesley finds his way into the city by night. 
An old woman whom he had befriended in former days, 
detects him, and gives information against him. The out- 
law, to the no small joy of the authorities, is torn from the 
anus of his wife and children, and a new gallows is forth- 
with reared in the market-place for his execution. But a 
swineherd boy, who had often seen the doomed man in 
Inglewood forest, and received kindness from him, learns 
what is passing, and hastes to apprise Bel and Clym of 
what is about to happen. The two resolve that Cloudesley 
shall be saved, or the three will die together. They de- 
spatch the porter at the town gate, and by stratagem and 
courage, they so fall upon the authorities at the place of 
execution, as to rescue their brother, killing the judge, the 
sheriff, and many more. The poet recounts these death- 
blows in a spirit which shows that the people were expected 
to shout applause as they listened to the tale.* 

* Percy Relics, iii. Jamicson's Ancient Popular Songs. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS EELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 303 

But the man who became the representative of this Eng- bo °k in. 
lish feeling beyond all other men in those times, was the Rq — — 
famous Eobin Hood. The history of this popular hero Hood - 
belongs to the close of the fifteenth century. Even in York- 
shire, we find some traces of him, in the places which bear 
the name of Eobin Hood's bay, and Eobin Hood's well. 
But the forest of Sherwood, or sire-wode^ which was his 
home, stretched in those days from the centre of Yorkshire 
to the town of Nottingham. Through more than a century, 
Sherwood forest was the great castle of the Saxon. There, 
at least, the Normans could be defied, and kept at bay. It 
is with that portion of this fastness which covered a large 
part of the midland counties, that the exploits of Eobin 
Hood are mostly associated. 

Discarding many contradictory accounts relating to his 
supposed origin and end, it is not to be doubted that this 
outlaw king attracted to himself some hundreds of armed 
men, whose bows and swords made them the terror of all 
Norman officials in their neighbourhood, whether in church 
or state ; that the industrious, the widow, and the poor had 
never anything to fear from the approach of Eobin or 
his men ; that his heart was the stoutest heart of all his 
band, as his bow was the strongest and the truest bow ; that 
next to him came his man Little John, who is always at his 
side, be the face of fortune what it may ; that with these 
two, honourable place was given to Mutch, the miller's son, 
to old Scathlocke, and to the militant Friar Tuck, with his 
terrible quarter-staff ; that these merry woodsmen never 
killed, except in self-defence ; and that nothing was farther 
from their thoughts than making themselves rich — their 
one concern being to rectify some bad differences which 
had grown up of late, by taking from the oppressor and 
giving to the oppressed, and by moderating the excesses of 
the proud and the wealthy, in favour of the humble and the 
poor. Hence this robber king was, in his way, very religious 
— a Saturday spent in seizures on the highway, being fol- 
lowed by a Sunday spent with scrupulous devoutness at 
church. Eobin's hostilities were especially directed against 
the sheriff, or count, of Nottingham, in whom the military 



304 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 3. 



His mem- 
ory grate- 
ful to the 
English. 



Eetrospoct. 



power of the district was vested. All possible means were 
resorted to for the apprehension of this man. Many were 
his perils, but many were his escapes and deliverances. In 
all his dangers warm hearts sympathized with him, and did 
what they could to serve him — in all his successes they 
shouted for joy." 

When the day of Robin Hood had passed, the people 
instituted seasons of holiday to his memory. For centuries, 
no occasion of popular pageantry and festival was so full 
of mirth, as that which commemorated the forest king, and 
the merry men who did his free and righteous bidding. 
The many associations of ' Foresters ' still existing among 
us, owe their origin to that inextinguishable feeling of Saxon 
nationality which prevailed thus under our earlier Norman 
kings. Even so late as the time of Chaucer, we find the 
story of Gamelyn, the ' Cook's Tale,' breathing the Robin 
Hood spirit throughout. Its great feature is contempt of 
the law, and war with those who uphold and administer it ; 
and the reader is expected to applaud the hero when he 
hangs the judge in the place of the alleged culprit. The 
ruling class is accounted alien, and right and humanity are 
supposed to be on the side of resistance. Even in the days 
of Henry VI. the name of the great ' north country ' man, 
Redesdale, is connected with the traces of this old English 
anti-Norman spirit, as still living beyond the Humber. 

We see, then, that the effect of the Norman Conquest in 
relation to the English people was to deprive them of pro- 
perty and place — of possessions and of political existence. 
But the wrong and insult heaped upon them did not con- 
vert them all into willing slaves. Cast down, they were 
not destroyed. Nor was their spirit broken. We see this 
in part in the defiance of wrong by individual men, and 
by small bands of men, but much more in that wide and 
fervent sympathy which the career of such men is seen to 
call forth. That there were men in those days disposed to 
resort to such modes of life, is not a fact of much historical 
significance — but that the character of the men in this case 



* Jameson's Popular Songs, ii. 
Metrical Romances. 



Percy's Relics of Ancient Poetry. Ellis'a 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 305 

should be such as it is, and that the whole Saxon population book in. 

should have become so outspoken in its admiration of them, 

these are facts which the historian who would write an in- 
telligible history of England must not overlook. The Anglo- 
Saxons, rude and warlike as they may have been, had much 
to do, or supposed they had, both with the making and with 
the administration of their laws, and were always distin- 
guished by their respect for law. It is not until the Nor- 
man lawlessness comes in, that some of them are content to 
become outlaws, and that the popular feeling comes to be 
everywhere in favour of such men. 

How this feeling came to make its way, ere long, from 
the lower stratum of society to the higher, will be matter 
for inquiry elsewhere. In this place, the reader has to look 
on the country we call England as the home of two races, 
distinct from each other, and antagonistic to each other. 
The Normans consist of nobles and knights, with followers 
and fair dames. They have their homes in castles fenced 
about with moats and bridges. The battlements and turrets 
of those structures, and the proud standards which float 
above them, are seen rising over the forest trees in the dis- 
tant valley, or along the mountain side. Within those 
frowning walls, such brilliancy as the wealth of those days 
could command gradually makes its appearance — decorated 
halls, gay minstrels, the banquet and the tournament. The 
language spoken is French, the taste and manners are 
French, the whole pageant is from another land — it is not 
the birth of this land. Its outward form, its inner life, are 
foreign. To find the old language, the old blood, the old 
thought and feeling and usage of the land, you have to 
leave the Norman castle, and to descend to the town dwel- 
ling, or to the country homestead of the Saxon. Some few 
of those homes, in borough, town, or upland district, may 
bespeak moderate comfort, and may seem to say that there 
will be wealth there some day. More are of a humbler sort, 
where all within is only too much like what is seen with- 
out. But at those fire sides the talk is often of the days 
when the speech of the Saxon was that of the hall of the 
noble, and of the palace of the king — of the time when the 
Vol. I.— 20 



306 NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B ^ 0K X IL men who governed Englishmen were of their own true kin- 

dred, and when their common blood did much to dictate 

kindly offices beween the ruling and the ruled. Every new 
injury brings back the memory or the tradition of those 
old days, and prompts the oppressed to heap his maledic- 
tion on the iron cruelty of the oppressor, or, it may be, to 
think of the brave Alfred, and of the good king Edward, 
and to pray for deliverance. Nor did such men pray in 
vain. 

Rise of How soon our Anglo-Norman kings began to strengthen 

towns. ° 

their position by granting special charters to English towns, 
is a somewhat obscure question. The kings of France and 
of Scotland began to act on this policy early in the eleventh 
century ; and when Glanvil wrote, which was under Henry 
n., the liberties of the free boroughs in England were such, 
that if a bondsman sought a home in one of them, and con- 
tinued unclaimed for a clay and a year, he became free. 
In the Anglo-Saxon times, the business of the tradesman 
and merchant was subject to many vexatious regulations. 
The freedom of the free boroughs after the Conquest, con- 
sisted in liberty to buy and sell free from such impedi- 
ments ; in the exemption of traders as such from certain 
tolls and exactions ; in the right of the townspeople to 
choose their own officers to regulate their own local affairs, 
and to possess their own keys ; and in the subjection of the 
place to the crown, to the exclusion of all interference from 
the feudal lords of the district. In the transactions between 
the barons and prelates, and John, earl of Moreton, after- 
wards king John, on the one side, and the citizens of London 
on the other side, relating to the deposition of Hubert the 
Justiciar, the negotiations are clearly as between two dis- 
tinct and independent powers, and the course to be taken 
is upon grounds mutually determined. Towards such a 
course the affairs of towns had long been tending through 
the kingdom at large. In the leading towns, the different 
trades and ' mysteries ' were formed into guilds, which were 
all of them the objects of special protection and privilege. 
The revenue and the power of our kings were greatly aug- 
mented from these sources. Among the commodities fairly 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. 307 

purchased by these ancient burgesses were their liberties — book in. 
a commodity not to be taken from them* 

* Brady On Boroughs. Rolls and Records, Introd. § xxxi. The municipal 
history of France, and of the south of Europe, differs considerably from our 
own. In those countries the old Roman cities were more or less perpetuated 
through all the changes which came with the fall of the empire. It was not 
so with us. See Thierry's Tiers Etat and his Essays. 

Lord Macaulay's brilliant eulogy on the character of the Normans is an 
extraordinary piece of composition in more respects than one. In regard to 
military discipline and efficiency, and the qualities which that efficiency may 
be supposed to imply, the Normans were, at the time of the Conquest, very 
much as his lordship has described them. But, among the many other points 
embraced in his lordship's description, there is hardly one to which strong ex- 
ception may not be taken. It is, in fact, a description, for the most part, that 
does not apply to the Normans in Normandy at all, nor to the Normans in 
England until we descend to the third or fourth generation after the Conquest, 
and only partially even then. How the Normans came to be the men they 
were when they had been thus long naturalized in England, and not before, is 
a question of some interest, and not to be readily answered. 

Describing the Normans before the Conquest, Lord Macaulay says, they 
found the language of Normandy ' a barbarous jargon ; they fixed it in writ- 
ing ; and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, and romance.' {Hist. i. 
p. 11.) It is a fact, however, that we have no collection of laws, no national 
historic work, no poem, no essays, not even a volume of sermons, by any 
native of Normandy from the time before the Conquest, to lend support to 
this representation. (Lappenberg, England under the Normans. William I.) 
The few names of cultivated men which belong to the history of Normandy 
in the latter half of the eleventh century, are the names of Italians or French- 
men, they are not the names of Normans. Our earliest written authority in 
relation to the laws of Normandy, does not go further back than the time of 
Henry II. (Coutumier of Normandy); and the compiler of that work thinks it 
probable that, in the history of jurisprudence to that time, the influence of 
Normandy on England had been less, than the influence of England on Nor- 
mandy. Judge Hale is strongly of this opinion (Hist. Com. Law, cc. vi. vii), 
and the opinion becomes highly probable, from the much older civilization, 
and the greater wealth, of the conquered country. The literature of ' ro- 
mance,' in the history of the Normans, of which we have any knowledge, is 
not older than the latter half of the twelfth century, and was not only the 
work of Normans in England long after the Conquest, but consists of little 
else than a metrical rendering from English tales and ballads, or from the 
Latin prose of our own Geoffrey of Monmouth. The earliest known use of 
Norman-French in authorship does not occur until at least half a century after 
the settlement of the Normans in this country, and of that instance we have 
only the tradition, the work itself does not exist. — Ellis's Metrical Romances, 
Introd. § 1. 

Lord Macaulay further states, that such was the contempt with which the 
English were regarded by the Normans, that when Henry I. hoped to gain the 
affection of the natives by marrying an English princess, the marriage was re- 
garded by ' many of the barons as a marriage between a white planter and a 
quadroon girl would now be regarded in Virginia' 0- 14). Is it not strange, 
then, that the Norman writers should tell us that William himself, the master 
of all those barons, betrothed one of his daughters to that quadroon Harold, 
son of earl Godwin, another to that quadroon Edwin, son of earl Alfgar, and 
that he gave his niece Judith in marriage to that quadroon Waltheof, son of 
earl Siward. Did the taint run in the blood of the one sex and not in the 
other ? It would hardly seem to be so, for a sister of this quadroon princess 
became the wife of one^of these haughty barons ; and marriages between the 
two races were only too common for the happiness of Anglo-Saxon females of 
good family whose lot was cast in those evil times. In more than one instance, 



308 NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 

BOOK III. a Norman princess was not thought to be degraded by being given in marriage 
Chap - 3 - even to a Welshman. — Ellis's Metric. Rom. Introd. § 3. 

That the Norman barons were often disposed to indulge in a tone of mili- 
tary insolence towards the English, and that there were men in the herd of 
adventurers who followed them, ready to copy their example in this particular, 
may be true enough. But it does not follow from such facts that the Anglo- 
Saxons, while inferior to their oppressors in military skill, were not their su- 
periors in much beside. The Normans, we have reason to believe, retained 
much of the hard physiognomy which they had derived from their coarse 
Norwegian stock ; and much in their manners which had come from the 
same source ; while the better class of Anglo-Saxons, of both sexes, are 
known to have been remarkable for their personal beauty, and also, it would 
seem, for a mildness, and a comparative refinement of manner, of which we 
trace small evidence among the invaders who fought at Hastings. In legis- 
lation, in the useful arts, in the arts which contribute to the embellishment of 
life, in learning, and in morals and piety, the Anglo-Saxons had made no mean 
progress while the Normans were still mere freebooters, and a progress which 
the Normans of the eleventh century had but very partially reached. ' Wil- 
liam,' says an authority before cited, 'celebrated the Easter festival (March, 
1067), at Fecamp, whither many French princes and nobles were attracted, in 
honour of their former equal, now by craft and the fortune of war exalted 
high above them. Great was the wonder manifested by all on beholding the 
young Anglo-Saxons, with their long flowing locks, whose almost feminine 
beauty excited the envy of the comeliest among the youth of France. Nor 
was their admiration less on seeing the garments of the king and his attend- 
ants, interwoven and encrusted with gold, causing all they had previously 
seen to appear as mean ; also the almost numberless vessels of gold and silver 
of surpassing elegance : for in such cups only, or in horns of oxen, decorated 
at both extremities with the same metals, the numerous guests were served 
with drink. Overwhelmed with the sight of so much magnificence, the 
French returned home.' — Lappenberg's William I. William of Poitiers, sec- 
retary to the Conqueror, from whom the above description is taken, has 
added, 'the English women arc eminently skilful with their needle, and in the 
weaving of gold; the men in every kind of artificial workmanship' (p. 210). 
The Normans who invaded England were at the head of the military science 
of their age ; in scarcely anything else can they be said to have been in ad- 
vance of the English, in many things they were not on a level with them. 
Their valour stood them in good stead in Normandy, their learning and re- 
finement are almost wholly of a date subsequent to their settlement in 
England, and the higher education which awaited in England made them 
Englishmen. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE CONQUEST Etf ITS EELATION TO GOVEENMENT. 

THE interval during which, the great feature in English ^u^. 1 !. 1 ' 
history consists in the ascendency of the Normans and Design of 
the subjection of the Saxons, extends from the Conquest to ter. c ap 
the age of the Great Charter. The reigns included in this 
interval are those of the Conqueror, "William Rufus, Henry 
I., and Stephen ; also those of Henry II, and of his sons 
Richard and John. These reigns together cover a century 
and a half. The changes in respect to government intro- 
duced immediately after the Conquest, and the gradual 
development of the new political feeling, and of the new prin- 
ciples of government, which ended in the great settlement 
at Runny meade, constitute the subject to be treated in this 
chapter. 

Lawyers are accustomed to divide law into two depart- ^"gg" 011 
ments — the not written, and the written. "What is called ^ ™ t n ute 
common law, embraces all unwritten law, and much that law - 
has been written. Immemorial usage possesses the authority 
of law ; and law may be proved to be such by writings, 
as well as by other evidence, without becoming in the legal 
sense statute or written law. So little care has been taken 
to preserve the laws which had been committed to writing 
before the accession of Richard L, that, in the legal sense, 
all law before that time is accounted as unwritten, and as 
being law only from old usage. Statute law rests on the 
statutes recorded and preserved from that time. All that is 
antecedent is common law. 

The common law of England at the time of the Con- 
quest, was partly written and partly not written. The not 



310 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 4. 



Feudalism 
in England. 



Feudal in- 
cidents. 



written consisted in those old customs which had survived 
all record or compact relating to them. The written con- 
sisted in those written laws of the different Anglo-Saxon 
states which had been more or less collected and digested 
by Alfred, and Edgar, and the Confessor. In this mixture 
of custom and record we find the common law — the law of 
the land to Englishmen, at the time of the Conquest ; and 
these are the laws intended by the English when they pray 
so earnestly that they may still be governed as in the days 
of the good king Edward. We have seen what these laws 
were. "We have now to see how far they were perpet- 
uated.* 

The military organizations extended by the Normans 
over the country they had conquered, was the first great 
feature of change. The great men became tenants to 
the crown. Lesser men became tenants to the greater. 
The demand made on every tenant by his landlord, whether 
in the person of the king or the baron, was a certain amount 
of military assistance, or else a rent to be paid in the shape 
of produce or personal service. The first form of tenure, as 
mentioned elsewhere, was designated military tenure. The 
second was known by the name of soccage. 

These feudal tenures brought with them feudal burdens 
which were occasional, in addition to those which were 
regular. On succeeding to an inheritance, a considerable 
fine was paid to the king, under the name of the relief. On 
such occasions the contributions of those who held by mili- 
tary tenure consisted of horses and warlike accoutrements. 
The soccage tenant forfeited a year's rent ; the vilein his 
best beast. Similar exactions were made, under the name 
of aids, when the king knighted his eldest son, or gave his 
daughter in marriage. It was provided also, that the prop- 
erty of state offenders should escheat to the crown, and that 
the same should follow on the failure of heirs. Trial by duel 
was hardly known among the Anglo-Saxons. It became 
very common among the Anglo-Normans. "With these 
novelties came a stricter enforcement of the laws of primo- 



§3 



* Hale's History of the Common Law. Blackstone'3 Commentaries, Introd. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS KELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 311 

geniture, and a series of laws limiting the right of the parent book hi. 

to alienate his property, especially his inherited property. 

But no feature of the new legislation was so repugnant to 
the feeling of the English as the forest laws. The chasing 
away of people by thousands from the soil, that their homes 
might be converted into forests for wild animals, was evil 
enough ; but the punishments which followed the violation 
of those laws rilled the cup of the popular indignation to the 
full. It is true the Conqueror was opposed to capital pun- 
ishments, but it was, as we have said, simply because his 
merciless nature regarded mutilation as likely to prove a 
greater terror than the gallows.* 

In a great meeting convened at Salisbury in 1086, Wil- ® r e ^ n at 
Ham required that all subtenants, no less than his great ten- Salisbury, 
ants, should be accounted as holding their lands from the 
crown. According to the Saxon Chronicle, this meeting 
embraced ' all the tenants of the land that were of conse- 
quence over all England.' Another contemporary authority 
says, the persons assembled were not less than 60,000 — all, 
as the Saxon annalist writes, ' becoming the vassals of this 
man.'f 

This fact shows, beyond doubt, the great power retained its -.frccts. 
by the Conqueror to the last year of his life. The tendency 
of this proceeding was to detract somewhat from the inde- 
pendence of the nobles, by diffusing a spirit of divided alle- 
giance through all the sub-vassals of the king. Its effect, 
however, was not so much to augment the power of the 
crown, as to open the way to a gradual elevation of the 
people. For the right of direct interference on the part of 
the crown, in all the relations between landlord and tenant, 
which was thus established, extended to county and bor- 
ough ; and in the contentions which frequently arose from 
this source between the king and his nobles, the people were 
generally the gainers. Two masters thus came into the 
field, and each often claimed allegiance on the ground of 
being the best. To the class of landholders whom we now 
designate the gentry, this arrangement was often advanta- 

* Blackstone iv. bk. iv. c. 33. Reeves's Hist. Eng. Law, i. c. 2. 
f Chron. Sax. ad an. 1086. Ordericus. Madox, Hist. Excheq. c. i. 



312 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



B ch!S J "" S e0lTS - I* gave them a right of appeal from local oppres- 
sion, of which it would be in their power to avail them- 
selves. 

conquIro b r° ^he temper and the circumstances of the Conqueror gave 
their impress to his policy. His distrust of the English was 
the natural result of the course which he had taken towards 
them. He did enough to make confidence in him impos- 
sible, and then affected to complain of the want of confi- 
dence. It was not in his nature to choose a mild course 
for its own sake. His avarice and his ambition prompted 
him to rule with a strong hand. To gratify these passions 
he could descend to almost any depth in craft or crime. 
Erom these causes he has his place in the class of rulers 
whom history must describe as tyrannical, severe, cruel. 
His strength never came from the affection of those beneath 
him, but from a stern mastery over their interests and their 
fears. "When he promised at his coronation to rule the 
people of England as the best of their kings had ruled them, 
it was to secure the appearance, as far as possible, of an 
English suffrage in connexion with that ceremony. When 
he pledged himself in the most public and solemn manner, 
two years later, to uphold the laws of Edward the Con- 
fessor, it was with the hope of deterring the southern Eng- 
lish from taking part with the insurgents of the north.* 
In so far as those laws might be observed consistently with 
his main purpose as a conqueror, he would probably observe 
them — but assuredly no further. In the great meeting at 
Salisbury, the pledge to govern according to the good laws 
of Edward, and of his predecessors, was renewed.f 
Lairs of It W as not the wish of the Normans themselves that 

idwardthe . . 

confessor— those laws should be wholly superseded. Even in the 

how far per- . . . 

r ' et d" at th worst times, they were upheld in their substance, especially 
kin r ™ an m c ^ y ^ cailses ) ano o with very limited exception, in criminal 
causes. The feudal subordinations introduced by the Con- 
quest, left the hundred courts, and the county courts, much 
as they had been ; and justice as between man and man, 

* Juravil super omnes reliquias Ecclesise Sti. Albani, tactisque sacrosanctis 
evangeliis, bonas et approbatas antiquas regni leges — inviolabiliter observare.— 
Matt. Paris, Fit. Abbat. 30. 

\ Madox's Exchequer, c. i. 5. 



THE CONQUEST IK ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 313 

and offences against the public peace, were dealt with, for b °°k iil 
the most part, as in past times. It was, in many respects, 
greatly to the advantage of the Normans that this course 
should be taken. 

An instance showing the value of these laws even to the 
conquerors, we see in the use which they made of the Saxon 
hundred for the security of their own lives. When the 
natives could no longer resist their oppressors openly, they 
not unfrequently avenged themselves upon them by private 
onslaught. The result was a law which declared, that on 
the discovery of the body of a murdered man, if the de- 
ceased could not be proved to have been an Englishman, it 
should be presumed that he was a Norman, and the hun- 
dred in that case was required to bring the homicide to jus- 
tice, or to pay his fine.* 

The laws administered in the local courts were certainly 
in substance the same, but the Saxon thanes and officials, 
as the administrators, had been displaced by the strangers. 
It was something, however, to have so much of these ' wise 
customs ' preserved. The free spirit in which they had 
originated might some day return to them, develop, and 
mature them. But for the present, a Norman might kill 
an Englishman with impunity, if he could only say that he 
thought him a rebel.f And while to the Saxon was ceded 
the doubtful privilege of clearing himself by ordeal, the 
Norman might clear himself by duel, or simply by his 
oath. About a century and a half subsequent to the Con- 
quest, the church of Rome abolished trial by ordeal, and in 
that act rendered service to humanity 4 Still the use of 
French in all the law courts, which continued to the time 
of Edward IIL, is of itself sufficient to indicate the inequal- 
ity of the two races before the tribunals of the country. If 
we suppose this custom a necessity, the officials being all 

* Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxoniccc, 228 et seq. Hoveden, ad an. 1180. In 
the reign of Richard I. a hundred was fined on account of persons found in it 
who had died from want, not from violence of any kind — a custom which 
seemed to embrace the principle of a poor-law. — Rolls and Records, Introd. 
§xxi. 

•f Decreta Prcesulum Normannorum. Wilkins, Concilia, 366. 

\ NotcB ad Eadmerum, edit. Selden, 204. 



314 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B £°* in. Frenchmen, the disadvantage to the English was not the 

less on that account. 

iTi r ry-its I R one material respect the Anglo-Norman legislation 

history. soon became an improvement on that of the Anglo-Saxons. 
Lawyers of great learning have been wont to speak of our 
trial by jury as an institution older than the Conquest.* 
But we have seen that men of learning who have traversed 
this ground more recently, have made it appear, that trial 
by jury, in our sense, was not known in England earlier 
than the reign of Henry II. f We have seen elsewhere, 
that what was often described as trial by jurors, under the 
Saxon kings, was in fact a trial by magistrates.^ The jurors 
were witnesses. They did not deliver a joint verdict on the 
case : each juror gave his evidence, and the conjoint evi- 
dence so given, was intended to guide the functionary pre- 
siding in forming and pronouncing a judgment. The persons 
selected, accordingly, to serve on those juries, were always 
chosen on the ground of neighbourhood, or as being persons 
^supposed to know most of the case. The jury so constituted, 
was not to include persons whose nearness of kin was likely 
to bias their depositions. For a lawful cause, also, any 
member of such a jury might be challenged, either by the 
accused or by the accuser. Even such an intervention of 
the principle of a jury, inasmuch as it made the evidence 
of guilt to depend generally on the unbiassed testimony of 
neighbours and equals, was a great protection to the subject. 
But much was gained when a jury was chosen from the 
1 country,' and empowered to judge concerning the evi- 
dence adduced, and to say guilty or not guilty. The deci- 
sion of the case then virtually rested, not with the magis- 
trate, but with good men from the locality, panelled for the 
occasion, and dismissed when the occasion was over. Trial 
by a jury of witnesses had obtained in Normandy, as well 
as in England, before the Conquest ; but trial by jury, in 
the modern sense, dates from about the time when the 
church abolished trial by ordeal. 

Before that time, indeed, individuals, as a matter of 

* Coke ; Spelman ; Blackstone. f Palgrave, i. c. viii. 

% See pp. 237-240. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 315 

favour, and commonly of purchase, were allowed to submit B £°*p " L 
their cause to the judgment of twelve or twenty-four men 
from their neighbourhood, and so to be exempt from the 
decision of the magistrate. Such cases, however, were rare, 
and restricted, we may be assured, to Normans. But they 
involved a principle which was to become staple, and emi- 
nently fruitful. When trial by ordeal ceased, and some 
change became necessary, our lawyers might have fallen 
back upon the civil law, which would have left the judg- 
ment both of law and evidence wholly to the judge. But 
they took the onward course. They retained the usages 
which time and experience had sanctioned, and they changed 
jurors who could only give evidence, into jurors who might 
deliver a verdict.* 

It is important, however, to remember, that trial by 
jury, in this sense, was restricted to courts acting by the 

* Palgrave, ii. c. viii. It is important to mark, that this improved form of 
trial by jury was the growth of the Norman intellect in England. It had no 
previous existence in Normandy. The same may be said of much beside in the 
history of Norman jurisprudence in this country. 

Selden, in his learned dissertation on Fleta, has shown that the Roman law 
was the law of Britain while under the Romans, and that Papinian, the prince of 
lawyers, as he was called, was for a time at the head of judicial affairs in this 
country. But with the departure of the Romans the imperial law wholly disap- 
pears from our history, until we come to the age of Glanvil, Bracton, and Fleta, 
whose lives cover the reigns of Henry II. and Henry III. In the writings of 
these great authorities on English law, there are frequent citations from the civil 
law ; but these citations are never made as being in themselves law to the Eng- 
lish. They are adduced as corroborating English law where they happen to agree 
with it, or as giving the decisions of experience and reason on points for which 
our own law may not have made provision. The year 1140 is mentioned as the 
time from which some attention began to be given to the study of Roman law in 
England ; and Roger Vicarius, fomerly abbot of Bee, so far distinguished him- 
self as a teacher at Oxford on this subject, in 1149, that in 1153 Stephen issued 
a prohibition against him. But the study was not suppressed by that means. 
Edward I., the great lawyer among our kings, availed himself of assistance from 
that source, but always in dependence on the sanction of our legislature. But 
from the accession of Edward III. the course of our legislation is little influenced 
from that quarter. The feeling of the nation was always with the common law, 
and so much opposed to the use of the civil law, that it was kept within limits 
which were comparatively, if not altogether, harmless. Blackstone, indeed, 
complains heavily of the intricacies and refinements introduced by these Norman 
lawyers ' to supersede the more homely, but more intelligible, maxims of distri- 
butive justice among the Saxons. And, to say the truth, these scholastic re- 
formers have transmitted their dialect and finesse to posterity so interw r oven in 
the body of our legal polity, that they cannot now be taken out without a mani- 
fest injury to the substance.' — Commentaries, bk. iv. c. 33. See also Introd. § 
3, and Hale's Common Law. We have four courts in which the canon or civil 
law is acknowledged, subject to various restrictions — the ecclesiastical courts, the 
military and admiralty courts, and the courts of the universities. — Selden's Dis- 
sertation on Fleta. 



316 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



How the 
office of 
jurors rose 
with the 
custom of 
taxation. 



book in. king's writ or commission, it did not extend to the hundred 

Chap. 4. o ' 

court, nor to the court-leet. In the latter courts, the jurors 

continued to be witnesses, and nothing more. 

We must not leave the question of trial by jurors with- 
out touching on one more significant fact relating to it. The 
design of the Conqueror in securing an entry of all persons 
and properties in Domesday Book, was to possess himself of 
the information necessary for making his exactions, and 
exercising his arbitrary will, in a manner that should be scien- 
tific and certain. But this information could be obtained only 
by means' of jurors ; and the jurors pannelled for this pur- 
pose in every locality, consisted of necessity, not of Normans 
only, nor chiefly, but mostly of the old inhabitants. The 
Saxon jurors in such cases included the yeoman, the burgess, 
and even the churl. The local evidence thus supplied fur- 
nished for that time a sufficient basis for local taxation. It 
is material to observe that the people of the district did in 
effect determine the liabilities of the district, and that the 
king tacitly consented to be bound by the evidence so ob- 
tained. As the jurors in this case formed a recognised cor- 
porate authority, there would be a tendency in every such 
body to act, upon occasions, with a degree of independence 
and spirit which individuals in such circumstances could 
rarely assume when acting separately. The record of 
Domesdmj Booh made its report concerning the persons 
and properties of the kingdom in 1085. But suppose a few 
years only to pass, and it is obvious that this record must 
cease to be a satisfactory guide to the rateable property of 
the country. To ascertain the kind and degree of change 
that has taken place, new jurors must now be sworn, and 
new inquest made. But in this manner the precedent in- 
troduced by the Conqueror becomes a custom. It grows 
imperceptibly to be a recognised principle, that, in a sense 
at least, the people must not be taxed without their consent 
— the liabilities of the district must be virtually fixed by 
the ' good men ' of the district. The germ of the most lib- 
eral and healthy provision of Magna Charta, and of much 
more, lay in this usage. This good did the first William 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 317 

for our country, though his selfish and iron nature meant book hi. 

it not. 

This wholesome local custom had become general, before Relations of 

J ur y and 

it became law that tallages should no longer be levied with- Parliament. 
out the consent of parliament. In fact, the jury principle 
had never ceased to be a great educating principle among the 
English people. Its benefits were not restricted to the sift- 
ing of evidence in judicial cases. It trained the people to 
the discharge of political duties, and to the assertion of 
political rights ; and it taught even the proudest of our 
kings that there were points in political proceedings where 
popular feeling had raised a boundary, and set up an au- 
thority, which it might be dangerous to treat with disre- 
spect.* 

But this popular feeling was to seeth long in compara- g ufas- " 

1 r o o c Henry and 

tive secrecy before rising to the surface of history. During Stephen. 
the short reign of William Rufus, the arbitrary temper of 
the government, and the sufferings of the Saxons, were even 
greater than under the Conqueror. But Henry I. is de- 
scribed as ' the Lion of Justice.' And certainly, in check- 
ing the rapacity of the barons as he did, and in counterbal- 
ancing the influence of some of the more powerful among 
them by raising up many new men to the same rank, he 
gave evidence both of capacity and courage. His sway 
was that of comparative order. But the reign of Stephen, 
which followed, brings us to the lowest deep in political dis- 
organization and popular suffering known to English history 
since the Conquest. The pious monk who fills up the page 
of the /Saxon Chronicle at Peterborough, towards the close 
of this reign, is so appalled by the retrospect of these intes- 
tine wars and miseries, that they become to him the tokens 
that Christ and his saints must have ceased to concern them- 
selves longer with the interests of humanity, f Bnt on the 

* Palgrave, i. c. viii. 

f The tortures which the chronicler describes as those inflicted on male and 
female by the plunderers on both sides, in the hope of extorting property from 
them, are so horrible, that we must hope they were in some degree mere ru- 
mours, exaggerated by the alarm of the times. But the following may be taken 
as history. ' I neither can nor may tell,' says the monk, ' all the wounds, nor 
all the pains, which they did to the wretched men of this land : and this lasted 
the nineteen years while Stephen was king, and always it was worse and worse. 
They laid contributions on the towns every now and then, and called it tenserie ; 



318 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



The kin 
court. 



B cha^." L accession of Hemy II. a new complexion of affairs soon be- 
comes visible. 

The great instrument through which England was gov- 
erned, during this Norman period, was the king's council. 
This council, however, bore only a limited resemblance to 
a Witanagemote. It was the manner of our Anglo-Norman 
kings to keep the great church festivals — Christmas, Easter, 
and Whitsuntide — in their different palaces, at Westmin- 
ter, Winchester, Gloucester, and elsewhere. The pomp of 
the court was then to be present. Our kings in those days 
attached great importance to such pageantries.* But many 
grave proceedings were associated with such occasions. 
The king's court, as the centre of the opulence and splen- 
dour of the realm, was distinct from that court in its rela- 
tion to government. 

All persons belonging to the king's court for purposes 
of legislation and government were called to it by special 
summons. These persons consisted of barons only, who, as 
peers, possessed their rank in common. So convened, 
these nobles were supposed to represent the subjects of the 
realm generally, and the Anglo-Norman kings deemed it 
expedient to act, in many respects, as by the voice of that 
assembly. The laws passed during this period, were the 
iaws of the king, issued with the advice or consent of this 
council. f It is true, the subject was not always secured 
by this means against arbitrary measures on the part of 
the crown. Still, the idea familiar to all men came to be, 



Legislative 
power of 
the king's 

council. 



and when the wretched men Lad nothing more to give, then they plundered and 
burnt all the towns: and you might easily go a whole day's journey and never 
find a man remaining in a town, nor the land tilled. Then was corn dear, and 
flesh, and cheese, and butter, for there was none in the land. Wretched men 
died of hunger ; some went a-begging who formerly were rich men ; some fled 
out of the country. If two or three men came riding to a town, all the town- 
ship fled on account of them : they thought they were robbers. The bishops 
and clergy constantly cursed them, but this was nothing to them ; for they were 
all accursed, and forsworn, and lost.' — a.d. 1137. 

* One who lived in the court of the Conqueror says — ' He was very dig- 
nified ; each year he wore his crown thrice, as often as he was in England. On 
Easter he wore it at Winchester, on Whitsuntide at Westminister, on Christmas 
at Gloucester ; and at these times there were with him all the powerful men 
from over all England ; archbishops and diocesan bishops, abbots and earls, 
thanes and knights.' — Chron. Sax. a.d. lOS?. 

f Edinburgh Rev. xxxv. 1-43. Allen's Inquiry into the Growth of the 
Royal Prerogative in England. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 319 

that the valid form of law was that which gave it as the act ^JS.™ 
of the king, with the concurrence of this great council ; and 
that government according to such law, was the only just 
government. The laws of the Conqueror were issued in his 
own name and in the name of his council ; and the cele- 
brated Charter attributed to Henry I. states, that the king 
gives his subjects the laws of Edward the Confessor, with 
the emendations of his father, and that he does this with 
the consent of his barons.* The Saxons, we have seen, were 
earnest and constant in their call for the protection of these 
laws ; and before the close of the period now under review, 
many of the Normans had learnt to join in the demand. 
The spirit of this demand in both cases, was a desire to be 
governed by such known laws and customs as should be a 
protection against caprice and injustice, whether coming 
from the hands of kings or magistrates. 

Concerning the judicial power which belonged to the poweTof 
council of barons even under the Conqueror, we have some the counclU 
evidence in the proceedings reported as having taken place 
in the sixth year of that reign. In that year the king, with 
the advice of his assembled prelates and barons, put an end 
to the controversy which had gone up between the arch- 
bishops of York and Canterbury, in regard to precedence. 
The decision was in favour of Canterbury. In that year 
also, the charge of treason was brought before this council 
against earl Waltheof, and on the verdict there given 
by the peers the earl was beheaded. In the reign of Rich- 
ard the First we meet with a striking instance of the power 
in this form, which the Norman barons had learnt to regard 
as pertaining to them. The king, before going on his cru- 
sade, had appointed his chancellor, William Longchamp, 
as justiciary, or vicar of the kingdom, conjointly with the 
bishop of Durham. But Longchamp assumed the whole 
function to himself. The barons took upon them to chastise 
the folly and insolence of this man, which they did by 
depriving him of his office and sending him into exile. This, 
though done professedly in the name of the king, was to go 
far towards asserting the responsibilities of the ministers of 

* Madox, Hist. Excheq. c. i. 



320 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

^uip" 1- s * ate to tne C0lin ^Tj au( l the consequent right of im- 

peaclmient.* 

Bitter and protracted disputes arose during this period 
between the kings of England and the court of Eome. They 
were especially conspicuous in the long reigns of Henry I. 
and Henry II. In carrying on this warfare against the 
secular encroachments of the papacy, always urged by the 
ecclesiastical power, as usual, under spiritual pretences, 
both the kings above named, and especially the latter, Issued 
their many protests, not simply in their own came, but in 
tin- name of the great council of tin- nation. By this means 
the convening of this council came to be more frequent and 
regular. It- proceedings became more formal. Its author- 
ity was more generally acknowledged. Its position in all 
respects became more in harmony with our idea of a repre- 
sentative body or parliament. 

The officer who presided in the king's court, in the ab- 
sence of the king, was the Chief Justiciar. To that officer 
the guardianship of the realm was entrusted when the king 
was beyond sea. With the Justiciar were associated, as 
alike officers of the king's court, the Constable, the Mare- 
Bchal, the Chamberlain, the Chancellor, and the Treasurer. 
The division of labour which these different titles imply, 
helped to bring aboul thedivision of the one original court into 
Beveral. In brief, the four courts a1 Westminster were orig- 
inally so many subdivisions of the king's court. These courts 
all made their appearance towards the close of the period 
now under review. They came into existence by degrees, 
and appeal- to have been nearly coeval — lawyer.- have been 
willing to regard them as strictly so, that there might be 
no dispute about precedence. f 
Ti.ckinp-8 But the idea of the kingly office, strongly embodied in 

tteiaw/ tne l ftWB "' tne Anglo-Saxons, and in the Engli>h laws after 
the Conquest, is — that the king is the great administrator of 
law, the fountain of justice. His court, which, though cen- 
tral, moved from place to place, was designed to keep watch 

* Rolls a/id Records of the Court be/ore the King's Justiciars, i. Introduc- 
tion. 

t Madox, c. ii. six. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 321 

over all other courts ; so that justice failing anywhere, B ° 0K iii 

might, as a last resort, be always found there. Local courts 

resembled only so many local committees, delegated by the 
king to administer his laws in his name. The same may be 
said even of the Court of Common Pleas, or of King's 
Bench, the Court of Exchequer, and the Court of Chancery, 
as they make their appearance in the manner above men- 
tioned. The labour in all these courts was properly the 
king's labour, and those who serve there do so in his stead. 
Could the king do the whole, the legal conception of his 
position would say that he should do it. But that this 
work should have been done in great part from the first, 
and more and more afterwards, by delegation, has been a 
matter of necessity, and a benefit of incalculable amount 
to the subject. Our early Norman kings often judged in 
person, both in civil and criminal causes. It was by so doing 
that the Conqueror, Henry the First, and Henry the Sec- 
ond, made themselves felt by their judicial sagacity, no 
less than by their high station. The separation of the 
king's person from all part in such proceedings, in the man- 
ner familiar to ourselves, is a point of civilization which it 
has required many centuries to develop. 

The idea that the king is in all places where the laws 
are administered, comes from the same source with the ideas 
tha,t the king never dies, and that he can do no wrong. All 
these notions are well known to be fictions, but they are 
fictions which have their uses, and which have some foun- 
dation in truth. Such conceptions of the kingly office are 
purely of Roman origin. The Teutonic nations knew 
nothing of them. The canon law of the clergy took its 
form and spirit from the civil law of the empire, and church- 
men were naturally concerned to uphold both. In this 
attempt, they were aided by the leading provincials, who, 
though vanquished by the barbarians, survived to exercise 
great influence over them. It was the policy of these parties 
to extend their conception of sovereignty as it had existed 
in the emperors, to the rude kings who had come into their 
place. It was for the bold and free coadjutors of those 
kings to see that these fine words should be little else than 
Vol. I.— 21 



322 NORMALS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. words — that kings who had become such bv the swords of 

Chap. 4. a ... 

their followers, should not rule to their injury, nor without 

their influence. It was in this manner that monarchies, 
more or less mixed, were substituted all over Europe, in 
place of the purely despotic monarchy of the Roman 
empire. The political history of the European nations, 
is the history of these opposite tendencies, which combine 
to present results that are nowhere exactly alike, but which 
have something everywhere in common. For in European 
history, monarchies which are not in our sense constitu- 
tional, are subject to checks in many forms, sufficient to 
distinguish the prerogatives of modern kings from the abso- 
lute authority of the imperial masters of the Roman world. 
The idea of the king's ubiquity comes down to us with our 
most ancient laws ; and the idea of the divine origin of his 
office, which the clergy have professed to derive from Scrip- 
ture, is almost as old. But the notions that the king never 
dies, and that he can do no wrong, were of much slower 
growth. The law of primogeniture was not enough to de- 
termine the succession to the throne, even among our 
Anglo-Norman sovereigns, still less among the Anglo- 
Saxons. Before it was ceded that the king could do no 
wrong, it was necessary that the right to impeach the min- 
isters who might do wrong in his name should be acknowl- 
edged and settled ; and before it was admitted that the king 
could never die, it was imperative that such a fixed pro- 
vision should be made against the accident of his incompe- 
tency, wl i ether from tender years or other causes, as should 
assure the subject of the safety of the State on the demise 
of a sovereign. In the period under review, our constitu- 
tional history was not so far advanced as to allow of the ad- 
mission of such abstractions as the basis of law. Even so 
late as the time of King John, the Saxonized citizens of 
London recognised no king until John had been proclaimed 
by their mayor.* 

* Allen's Inquiry. A king's death was the usual signal for a general disor- 
ganization of the community ; and until another was established upon his throne, 
no protection could be found in the law. — Rolls and Records, Introduction. 
When Henry III. was near death, the citizens of London had chosen one mayor, 
the magnates another ; and the citizens, with their strong Anglo-Saxon notions 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 323 

Our kings must often have entrusted the administration B0 ; 0K In - 

~ Chap. 4. 

of justice to their justiciaries, and to officers much more m,^^ 
subordinate, before the times of Henry the Second. But it J ud s es - 
is not until some while after the accession of that monarch 
that we find England divided into law circuits, and judges 
in eyre — that is, ' itinerant,' or travelling judges, appointed 
to hold their assizes in given places, and at given times, in 
those circuits. The first division of the kingdom was into 
six circuits. Subsequently the six were reduced to four ; 
the country north of the Humber being one of the four. 
For that northern division six justices were appointed, and 
on account of distance, and still more on account of the 
condition of those provinces, these northern functionaries 
were vested with special powers. This is one of the meas- 
ures which have contributed to make the reign of Henry 
II. so memorable in our history.* 

But, important as these organizations must appear, Further 

, * , , . . . i • -i growth of 

under any view 01 them, the instructions given to the iudges the popular 

. , , . , . , , i . elementiu 

concerning the modes in which they were to obtain the cvi- govem- 

° J . ment. 

dence necessary to enable them to detect the delinquent, 
were fraught in a still higher degree with good for the fu- 
ture. For it was in this part of the proceedings that not 
only the jury principle, but a kind of representative princi- 
ple, came into new and most salutary action. 

"When Henry II. returned from Normandy, in the year 
1170, he found the people loud in their complaints on ac- 
count of the extortions and oppressions which had been 
practised upon them in his absence. Henry, with the 
advice of his great council (optimates), sent judges (barones 
errantes) to visit the different counties, and to collect evi- 
dence in relation to these charges. In pursuance of these 
instructions, the judges were empowered to demand on oath, 
from all barons, knights, and freemen, and from all citizens 
and burgesses, that they should say the truth concerning 
all that should be required of them on behalf of the king, 

concerning the interval between the death of a king and the proclamation of his 
successor as being an interval in which there was no king, waited for the death 
of Henry, with the intention of raising at that moment against the aldermanic 
class. — Ibid. § xlvii. 
* Madox, c. iii. 



324 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B cn^p l l L an( ^ t na * tne 7 should n °t conceal the trutli for love 01 
hatred, favour or affection, gift or reward. As the sheriffs 
and the bailiffs were the parties most vehemently accused, 
their conduct was to be especially investigated. Inquiry 
was to be made concerning the amount of money which 
they had unduly levied on the hundreds or townships since 
the king had passed into Normandy, so that every excess 
in rating might be ascertained, and every injury done by 
that means corrected. Care was to be taken also, to dis- 
cover in what instances the guilty had been allowed to 
escape without punishment, and the innocent had been 
accused without cause. So wide was the range of this 
inquiry, that all landholders were embraced in it, and 
required to give a true account of all things taken from 
their tenants, by lawful judgment, or without judgment. 
Archdeacons and cleans were subject to this scrutiny, in 
common with sheriffs and bailiffs. Great was the terror 
excited by these proceedings. The result indeed, was not 
altogether such as the fears of the offenders, and the hopes 
of the injured, had led them to expect. But the effect was 
good. It showed the delinquents the power that might at 
any time be evoked against them. Nearly all the sheriffs 
Were removed from their office, and many of their subor- 
dinates were subjected to heavy fines.* 

It will be seen, that in all these proceedings, the judges 
administered the law by means of jurors. In so doing, they 
made their uses, as far as practicable, of the old Saxon hun- 
dred. It should also be observed, that they conformed them- 
selves to another old Saxon usage, by accepting ' four men 
and the reeve,' as representative of a township. In a grand 
inquest held at St. Albans in the time of John, each of the 
demesne towns of the king sent its four good men and its 
reeve. We read also of ' four discreet knights,' and some- 
times of twelve men, as required from every county, cor- 
responding with the four men summoned from the borough, 
or the jurors summoned for the hundred. As these parties 
had been wont to present the grievances of the people 
before the representatives of the king in the old shiremotes, 

* Palgrave, i c. ix. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 325 

so now they presented them before the judges, who had B00K in- 
come into the place of the sovereign by a special appoint- — - 
ment. 

It is not easy to speak with confidence touching some of Recogm- 

• j> j> • e tionoftwo 

the nicer shades of fact m the historv of our constitution sreatprin- 

•* ciples. 

during this stage. We may see, however, very clearly, 
that the government was carried on by means of two main 
elements — by authorities deputed mostly by the crown on 
the one hand, and by means of evidence to be furnished by 
the people on the other. Over a large surface the king's 
power could avail nothing, apart from evidence so obtained ; 
at the same time, such evidence could avail nothing, apart 
from the assent of the crown. Great was the power of the 
crown ; but great also was the power of jurors, whether as 
restricted in their function to the presentation of evidence, 
or as permitted to be judges of evidence when presented. 

The history of authority among the Teutonic races is a course of 
history which moves upward, from the less to the greater, among tL 
The state begins with the smaller community, which grows tribes*"" 
large by embracing other communities like itself. The unit 
is before the aggregate ; and to the last, the unit is mindful 
of this fact, and jealous of its individuality. The tithings 
make up the hundred, the hundreds may become a shire, 
and the shires may become a kingdom — but the lowest was 
first, and is not content to be injuriously overshadowed by 
the highest, which has come last. Sovereignty among 
the Anglo-Saxons always bore the marks of being thus 
originated ; and sovereignty in the case of the proudest of 
the Normans was powerfully influenced and modified by 
these antecedents. "With the Celtic tribes, the policy which 
obtained has been the reverse of all this. The course of 
power with that race has been from above — from the 
greater to the less. 

Out of the uses of the representative principle for reme- 
dial and judicial purposes above mentioned, sprang its uses, 
as we shall see in another place, for legislative purposes, 
and for the general purposes of finance.* "When once a 
political machinery has become established, nothing is more 

* Edinburgh Rev. xxxvi. 290. Palgrave's Coimnonwealth, i. c. 9. 



326 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. common than to find it made to embrace many tilings not 

included in its original design. 

judicial Such, then, was the kind of effort made by the best 

corruption. ' ' ^ 

kings of this period to protect the bearers of the public 
burdens against oppression, and to secure that the adminis- 
tration of justice between man and man should be without 
fear or favour. The facts might seem to warrant the con- 
clusion that the acts of the crown itself would be especially 
marked by considerateness, humanity, and respect for the 
law. But no such inference is sustained by history. Places 
of emolument, even the chief offices of state, were com- 
monly a matter of purchase ; and men had learned to 
defend the usage gravely and without a blush, insisting 
that the man who had paid a heavy price for such a position 
was more likely to avoid what might occasion the loss of it, 
than the man who obtained it without cost. Our early 
Norman kings obtained large sums by this means. In 
reality, the monarchs of this interval felt little scruple about 
the modes of obtaining money, and appear to have thought, 
that while it certainly became them to see that the subject 
was neither despoiled nor oppressed by others, such acts as 
practised by themselves could rarely be a just ground for 
complaint.* 

It is notorious that in the reign of Henry II. there was 
no court in the land in which justice was not known to be 
bought and sold as a common article of merchandise. The 
oppressive means by which the crown enriched itself daily 
in those times, seem to us almost incredible. Money was 
sometimes given to appease the personal anger of the king, 
or to obtain his good offices against an adversary. Fines 
were extorted as the condition of allowing men to implead 

* Rolls and Records of the Coitrt held before the King's Justiciars, i. Intro- 
duction. No name is more disgracefully associated with the judicial corruptness 
of his times than that of Richard I., who seems to have inherited the covctousness 
of the first William, along with his military passion. 

During Richard's absence from the kingdom, his brother John acted with 
the nobles who were intent on removing Longchamp from the office of justiciar. 
John one day came to a meeting, and said that Longchamp was prepared to defy 
them all if he would only himself grant him his protection, for which he was 
ready to pay 700/. within a week. John added : ' I am in want of money — a 
word to the wise,' and retired. The nobles arranged to lend John 500/. to pre- 
vent his virtually re-selling the office of justiciar for 700/. — Ibid. Ixiv. Ixv. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 327 

a certain person, to sue in a certain court, or to enter upon B ° 0K in 

lands which they had recovered by law. Money was ' 

accepted from a suitor to help him against his antagonist, 
and sometimes from both suitors to help each against the 
other. In the latter case, it is supposed there was usually 
sufficient grace left to ensure the return of the money to the 
suitor who had not been successful. The Jews, and persons 
charged with criminal offences, were made to be a prolific 
source of revenue. "When kings could thus sell what should 
be priceless, it is easy to imagine what inferior judges would 
do. The privileges, and the most natural rights, of towns, 
were purchased at heavy costs, and on every confirmation 
of such grants new exactions were made. But, of all the 
forms of tyranny prevalent at that time, none is so extra- 
ordinary as the power which the king was allowed to 
assume over the persons and possessions of wards, and with 
regard to marriage generally, among the families of his 
nobles. The wards were commonly disposed of to the 
highest bidder ; and a tenant in chief of the crown found 
one consequence of his elevation to be, that he could neither 
marry himself, nor dispose of his children in marriage, 
according to his inclination, without purchasing that liberty 
by a considerable payment to the sovereign.* 

But good came from these excesses. Normans and Eng- 
lish were thus prepared, from the feeling of their common 
wrongs, to act together for their common deliverance. The 
provisions of Magna Charta point to nearly all the customs 
and abuses above mentioned as among the grievances of 
the times. 

But these exactions were made, for the most part, on Difficulty of 
individuals, or on isolated bodies of men. It is true, the 
individuals, and the bodies so dealt with, belonged to 
classes. But the individual noble found it difficult to move 
his brother nobles ; and the humble burgesses of one town 
possessed little means of influencing their brother burgesses 

* Towards the close of this period councils forbad the holding of tourna- 
ments, but Richard I. presumed to grant dispensations from such canons, and 
exacted a fee for so doing. — Rolls and Records, Introd. § xxii. Madox, c. iii. 
§ 6, *7 ; c. vi. § 1 ; c. vii.-xiv. On nearly all questions touching our constitu- 
tional history during this period the work of Madox is invaluable. 



328 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



book in. of other 

Chap. 4. 



Power of 
the crown 
from its 
great 
wealth. 



towns. Could either have succeeded, the move- 
ment would have been, at best, but the movement of a par- 
ticular grade or class. Thus the power to resist was to be 
for a while divided and weak, while the power to oppress 
remained central and strong. 

It is to be further observed, that with so many corrupt 
sources of revenue open to them, and with such large per- 
sonal domains, the kings of this period were much less 
dependent than their successors on general taxation. The 
wealth of the crown lands was enormous, and these the king 
could tax at his own discretion, as being his own. He 
could levy taxes, also, on all towns not ceded to his nobles. 
To the taxes, under the name of tallage, levied on the royal 
lands and on the towns, no limit was assigned, save such as 
prudence, or some sense of justice and humanity, might 
suggest.* The result of a tallage on the lands of the king 
was, in most instances, a supply of money ; the result of 
it on the lands of his barons, was a supply of men. These 
statements do not comprehend everything relating to this 
obscure and entangled subject, and some of them may be 
open to a degree of exception ; but they give, we believe, 
the substance of the matter as it stood. The liberties of 
the subject have grown out of the necessities of the crown. 
But our early Norman kings knew little of such necessities. 
During the first three or four reigns after the Conquest, the 
council of barons did not concern themselves about what 
the king might choose to do in respect to the occupants 
of his own lands, nor in relation to the towns immediately 
subject to him. Until the age of the Great Charter, accord- 
ingly, tallages, as we have stated, were imposed pretty much 

* The tallage rendered to the king (excluding the tallage of the Jews) was 
raised ' upon his demeasnes, escheats, and wardships, and upon the burghs and 
towns of the realm.' — Madox, c. xvii. 480. When the contribution was made 
for lands that were not of military tenure, it was called /adage, or aid ; when it 
was paid out of knights' fees, it was called scutage ; strictly speaking, it was a 
tallage only as it came from towns and boroughs. It came upon all towns, and 
less heavily on the counties than on the towns. — Ibid. c. xvii. When Madox 
says that the king imposed tallage on the ' towns of the realm,' 1 he of course 
excepts those ceded in whole or in part to the local nobility — all beside were royal 
towns. ' If men were not the king's immediate tenants, they were not tallage- 
able to the king, but to their immediate lord.' — Ibid. 498. ' But such inferior 
lord could not rightfully raise tallage ofhener, or in any other manner than the 
king raised tallage on his own demeasnes.' — Ibid. 516. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 329 

at the kind's will. But where there is no will of a repre- B P° K nt 

~ r Chap. 4. 

sentative body to impose restrictions, there remains the law 

of circumstances, to which the most arbitrary are bound 
more or less to conform themselves. 

It is not until we reach the reign of Richard I. that tal- origin of 
lages become known under the name of subsidies — and such tenths an<i 
names as tenths and fifteenths. These terms indicate the 
growth of system in the business of taxation. They sup- 
pose a definite and settled basis of assessment common to 
the whole kingdom.* 

The tax called Danegelt was of Saxon origin. It had Danegeit. 
been imposed on all the counties of England, and was de- 
signed to supply a fund for making special provision against 
invasions from the north of Europe. It was continued after 
the Conquest under the same name, and for the same pur- 
pose. But as the danger, to which it pointed by its designa- 
tion, died away, the impost itself became irregular, partial, 
and at length ceased to be levied. It was the ship-money 
of those days, and was paid for the last time soon after the 
accession of Henry II. f 

Of course, the king imposed duties on imports and ex- Duties on 
ports ; and this he appears to have done on his own authority, exports. M1 
This branch of revenue was generally farmed by contrac- 
tors. The articles on which the heaviest duties were paid, 
were wine, wool, and leather. Thus early, too, consider- 
able sums were obtained by the sale of patents and monop- 
olies. In the notice of London dues, in the reign of Richard 
I., we find the first mention of tin, as an article of traffic, 
since the departure of the Romans.:}: 

We have thus glanced at some great facts indicating the 
effect of the Norman Conquest on Government in England. 
"We have seen that the great proprietors among the Anglo- 
Saxons at that time were comparatively few in number. 
Even among these few, the earl Waltheof was almost the 

* Tenths and fifteenths were levied only on 'moveables.' In 1301, all the 
household furniture, utensils, clothes, money, horses, corn, and other provisions 
in the town of Colchester were valued by the tax-gatherers at 518/. 16s. 0\d. ; 
the fifteenth on which yielded 34/. 12s. Id. — Eden's State of the Poor, 26. A 
fifteenth was a fifteenth on the rated value of such property, and a tenth was a 
tenth ; but the rating seems to have been very low. — Brady, On Boroughs, 69. 
\ Madox, c. xvii. 475-480. % Ibid. c. xviii. 



Ketrospcct. 



330 NORMALS AJJD ENGLISn. 

book in. only man who could be said to be at all formidable. "With 

Chap. 4. « 

him fell the last hope of the English. This was in less than 

seven years after the battle of Hastings. The wealth and 
power of the Saxon nobility passed thus suddenly and 
completely into other hands. The enemy had not only 
killed, but had taken possession, and ruled as it pleased 
him. Those subject to his will suffered long from his 
scorn, his spoliation, and his tyranny. 
Good result- But the effect of this change was not all evil. The Nor- 

ingfrom ° 

the con- man government proved to be a strong government. Only 

quest. r & & J 

by such a government could that old enemy the Dane be 
taught to respect the shores of this island. In securing the 
kingdom against all further danger from that quarter, the 
Normans did a good work. And though, by their settle- 
ment in England, they added still another race to that ever- 
fretting mixture of races which had found their home in 
this country, they came as the new and more powerful ele- 
ment which was to contribute to give a new unity to the 
whole. The Saxons had only partially vanquished the 
Britons. The lesser states of the Heptarchy had submitted 
but imperfectly to the greater. The struggle between the 
Saxons and the Danes had issued in an angry compromise, 
rather than in a peaceful settlement. The Normans were 
the first real masters of the island since the departure of the 
Romans. Under the kings of this race, England became 
properly a kingdom, compact, potent, and promised to be 
some day equal to great things. 
overset But great politicians are not wise at all times. An ex- 

of the Con- ° .. . pi i • -l • rm 

queror. cess ot precaution is sometimes iatal to their object. Ihe 
Conqueror was solicitous to be known in history as the 
founder of a dynasty. "With this view, his forethought 
was exercised to bequeath large powers to his successors. 
But he could not ensure that the men to wield those powers 
should be always moderate and wise men. In the absence 
of this security, the greater the power vested in the crown, 
the greater the danger of excess on the part of its possessor, 
and the greater the danger of the disaffection naturally 
generated by excess. Excesses came, and attempts were 
made, from time to time, to abate the hostile feeling thus 



THE CONQUEST IN" ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 331 

awakened. Some good laws and usages which had obtained B00K I 11 

o o Chap. 4. 

in England, were ceded to the English, and others which 

had obtained in Normandy, were ceded to the Normans. 
The jealousies which grew up in this manner between the 
crown and the aristocracy, were favourable to popular lib- 
erty. Upon occasions, the king and the noble bid high for 
the popular suffrage. 

Still, the abuses of an almost unbounded prerogative ™ s r acc t!ons 
continued to be great. But as the Normans were exposed to diminished. 
those evils only in a somewhat less degree than the Eng- 
lish, the whole kingdom came ere long to have its reasons for 
wishing to impose some restrictions on a power so exorbi- 
tant. This it became the more possible to do, as the two 
races, the conquerors and the conquered, became much 
blended together by intermarriages and other influences. 
This, we are assured, by an authority of the time, was so 
much the tendency of affairs before the close of the reign 
of Henry II., that in the community at large, the distinc- 
tion between Saxon and Norman had almost disappeared. 
Even the differences of language were rapidly passing 
away.* 

Nor should we forget to refer again in this place to the 
educating influence of those wholesome customs which 
made the administration of the king's laws depend so largely 
on the will of the king's subjects in the capacity of jurors, 
always as witnesses, if not always as judges. It may 
be true that the laws administered in the Hundred court, 
and in the County court, could not be said to be always 
the old Saxon laws. Nevertheless, the English clung 
with great affection to those tribunals, and to the pop- 
ular freedom and influence inseparable from them. The 
manner of obtaining evidence, and the mode of admin- 
istration generally, remained, in most respects, as they had 
been when the law itself was without change from foreign 
influences. We must add, that the controversy of Henry 22£?" 
H. with Becket, the long absence of Eichard I. from the £T e r £l e 
kingdom, the imbecility and vices of his brother John, and, ££$? 
the disasters in Normandy, which left the kings of England 

* Dialogus de Scaccm-io, lib. i. c. i. 



332 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

without that resource to foil back upon in their times of 
weakness — all these were circumstances which tended to 
strengthen the heart of a great patriotic party, which had 
become intent on restraining that kingly power whence so 
much evil had come. In the Great Charter, they achieved 
more than the past had allowed them to promise them- 
selves. 

The reign of John is made up of three memorable quar- 
rels — the first with the king of France, the second with the 
pope, the third with his own barons. 

Arthur, duke of Brittany, was nephew to John, and 
vassal to Philip, king of France. John murdered his 
nephew, or at least caused him to be murdered ; and Philip 
took up arms to avenge the death of his vassal. The effect 
was, that of the domains of the English crown in France, 
the province of Guienne alone continued in any sort of 
relation to it. 

Innocent III. was the last of the Ilildebrand school of 
pontiffs. lie insisted that the vacant see of Canterbury 
should be filled by an ecclesiastic chosen by the monks of 
Canterbury. John insisted that the choice should be with 
the bishops of the province. The former course would be 
favourable to the pretensions of the Roman see, the latter 
to those of the English crown. The dispute thus originated 
rose so high, that the kingdom was laid under an interdict, 
the king himself was excommunicated, and the king of 
France was stimulated by Innocent to add the invasion of 
England to his invasion of Normandy. To such a state of 
desertion and weakness had John reduced himself by his 
incapacity and his vices, that he saw no means of saving 
himself except by making his submission to Innocent, and 
consenting to hold even the crown of England as a fief from 
the papacy. Having descended to this depth of degradation in 
the most formal manner, the thunders of the Vatican, which 
had been so long directed against him, were ready to be 
wielded in his favour, and the king of France was induced 
to desist from his threatened invasion. 

These were extraordinary humiliations. But they were 
the result of obvious causes. John's deed of blood disquali- 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 333 

fied him for resisting Philip in Normandy. In England, b ook m. 

his craven and cruel temper, his rapacity and oppressions, 

his treachery and licentiousness, were such as to have 
arrayed nearly all men against him. What marvel that 
such a man should be no match for Innocent III. 

John became king in 1199, and it is not until 1215, the 
last year but one of his reign, that the disaffection of his 
barons ripens into open revolt. This disaffection must not 
be supposed to have resulted from large political specula- 
tion on the part of the nobles of that age. The insolent 
behaviour of the king towards the wives and daughters of 
many of them, was one strong ingredient in the cup of 
their resentment. In other respects, the changes desired 
consisted of remedies against evils, everywhere more or less 
felt, which flowed naturally from the abuses of the feudal 
authority on the part of the subject, as well as on the part 
of the sovereign. The barons knew, that in attempting to 
impose new restrictions on the power of the crown, it would 
be necessary that their own power should become subject 
to new limitations. 

Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury, had Archbishop 
been raised to the primacy by Innocent, against the will of 
the king. An archbishop so promoted was not likely to 
expose himself to the resentment of his patron by becoming 
a patriot. A patriot, however, Langton proved. When 
John resigned the kingdom a second time into the hands of 
the pope, Langton rebuked the silence of the lay peers who 
were present, by delivering his protest against the proceed- 
ing. His more cultivated mind fitted him for becoming 
eminently serviceable to the unlettered barons in the strug- 
gle to which they were committed. At Winchester the 
king had been constrained to pledge himself to abolish all 
unjust laws, and to restore the good laws of the Confessor. 
In a council at St. Albans, he renewed this pledge. 

At a meeting of prelates and barons in St. Paul's, Lang- The baron& 
ton produced the charter attributed to Henry I., and made 
it clear that the principles there laid down went far towards 
providing against the abuses which had become so vexa- 
tious and formidable. Strange to say, important as were 



66± NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B cn^ Y 1 ' * ne P rov i s i° ns °f tms charter, it appears to have dropped 

out of men's thoughts. John declared he had never heard 

of it. So rude or unsettled had been the times since the 
days of the first Henry. But to be able to fall back thus 
on the laws of a Norman king, in seeking the redress of pre- 
sent grievances, was felt to be a great advantage. 

The next meeting of the barons was in the abbey of St. 
Edmundsbury, where the substance of their demands was 
agreed upon, and the parties swore to be faithful to each 
other until those demands should become law. From St. 
Edmundsbury they directed their steps towards London, 
which they entered in military array, for the purpose of 
presenting their complaints, in the form of a petition to the 
king. John replied that he must be allowed some time for 
consideration. Both parties had sought the good offices 
of the pope ; but Innocent sided with the king, as his vassal, 
to the great indignation of the nobles. In Easter week, 
both parties were active in mustering forces; but the fol- 
lowers of the king were few compared with those of the 
barons. John took possession of Oxford. The barons, 
with more than two thousand knights, and other armed 
men in proportion, marched to within fifteen miles of that 
place. Langton and the carl of Pembroke, who were still 
with the king, were deputed to ascertain the demands of 
the leaders of this force. Their demands were committed to 
writing, probably by Langton himself; and on his return, 
the archbishop read them aloud to the king, along with 
a conclusion which stated, that if these terms were not 
accepted, the barons were pledged to take possession of the 
royal castles and domains, as precautions for their own 
safety. 

John not only rejected these demands, but swore furious- 
ly that he would never submit to such terms. ' Why,' said 
he, in bitter accents, ' why do they not demand my king- 
dom at once ? ' On learning that the king had so decided, 
the barons appointed Fitzwalter their general. Northamp- 
ton refused them admission ; but Bedford gave them wel- 
come, and London secretly invited them to make the capital 
the centre of operations. The pope censured all these 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 335 

proceedings. The barons paid little heed to his denuncia- book hi. 

tions. The j summoned all of their order, who had not joined 

them, to do so without delay, on pain of being accounted 
enemies to the liberties of the people, and to the peace of 
the kingdom. 

The king saw himself miserably deserted. Seven attend- 
ants, some of whom were of doubtful fidelity, were all that 
remained with him in his retreat at Odiham. Great was 
his anger against the barons, ceaseless were his efforts to 
secure adherents, at any cost, or from any quarter. But 
his passion and his policy were alike fruitless. The nation 
was with the men in arms against him. He was compelled, 
accordingly, to give the barons a meeting, and to consider 
terms of agreement. 

From Windsor Castle the kino; descended to a level Magna 

Charta. 

meadow-land near Staines, known by the name of Running- 
mead, from a stream which passed through it. There the 
two parties encamped at a given distance. In the interven- 
ing space the deputies assembled, and conferences com- 
menced, which lasted four days. At length the Great 
Charter received the royal signature ; and the Tower and 
City of London were retained by the barons until twenty- 
five of their number should be appointed as guardians of 
the liberties of England, with power to levy war against 
the king, if necessary, for the maintenance of the said lib- 
erties. 

As the grievances against which the provisions of the 
Great Charter were directed came largely from the feudal 
system, they were, of course, such as would naturally pass 
away with that system. But the redress, even in those 
cases, was sought on a principle possessing a permanent sig- 
nificance and value. That principle was, that there is a 
power in the subject which may be legitimately exercised 
to impose restrictions on the power of the crown. "Ward- 
ship, and other feudal usages, together with the abuses 
which grew up with them, have ceased ; but the principle 
which curbed excesses in that day, has survived to check 
tendencies to excess in other forms, in the same quarter, to 
our own time. 



336 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B cu.5 " L "^ ie ^ W0 g ran( i provisions in every scheme of liberty 

must have respect to the security of person and property. 

On the first of these points the Charter says — ' No 
freeman's body shall be taken, nor imprisoned, nor dis- 
seised, nor outlawed, nor banished, nor in any ways be 
damaged, nor shall the king send him to prison by force, 
except by the judgment of his peers, and by the law 
of the land.' On the second point, the language of this 
memorable document is — l No scutage nor aid shall be im- 
posed on the kingdom, except by the common council of the 
kingdom ; unless it be to redeem the king's body, to make 
his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his eldest 
daughter ; and that to be a reasonable aid ; and in like 
manner shall it be concerning the Tallage and aids of the 
city of London ; and of other cities, which from this time 
shall have their liberties ; and that the city of London shall 
fully have all its liberties and free customs, as well by land 
as by water.' The Great Charter, accordingly, was a sol- 
emn protest against the evil of arbitrary arrests and arbi- 
trary taxation. It placed the law as a fence about the per- 
son of the subject ; and in regard to taxation, it placed the 
authority of the ' common council of the kingdom ' abreast 
with the authority of the king. 

It is true, the Charter restricted this parliamentary au- 
thority to those who were the direct tenants of the crown — 
that is, to the aristocracy. But it made the suffrage of that 
assembly indispensable to the action of the crown in all 
matters of taxation ; and provided, moreover, for its being 
at all times duly and legally convened. It is in the very 
next reign, that the word parliament comes to bo under- 
stood as including a house of commons. 

It is true, also, that the provisions of the Great Charter 
did not descend more than indirectly and partially to the 
lowest class — the non-franchised of those days. But even 
the ' villein,' often little above the serf, was not to be dis- 
trained of his ' waggonage.' * And it is no small matter to 

* ' A freeman shall not be amerced for a small offence, but only according 
to the degree of the offence ; and for a greater delinquency, according to the 
magnitude of his delinquency, saving his contenement ; a merchant shall be 
amerced in the same manner, saving his merchandize ; and a villein shall be 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS KELATION TO GOVERNMENT. 66 i 

find these haughty barons stipulating that there shall be B £°*.*J L 
' no sale, no delay, no denial of justice ' in the case of the 
humblest freeman. This stipulation conferred a benefit of 
much value on a large portion of the Saxon population of 
those times. Its tendency was to put the law in the place 
of the lawlessness both of the king and of the noble. It 
should always be remembered, that the barons surrendered 
much themselves, in calling upon the king to make this sur- 
render. Many evils of that time were thus abated or abol- 
ished, and many principles were avowed or assumed, which 
were to be applied in after times upon a scale never sus- 
pected by those who had evoked them. The seeds were there ; 
the vegetation and the growth would come in its season. 
Magna Charta and the Charta De Foresta, says Sir Edward 
Coke, have been confirmed, established, and commanded to 
be put in execution by thirty-two several acts of Parliament.' 
So unwelcome had these concessions been to the crown, so 
precious were they in the estimation of the people. Of all 
the evils introduced by the Normans, the most arbitrary 
and pitiless were the forest laws. The penalties of those 
laws no longer extended to life or limb.* 

So great, on the whole, was the change — the Revolution 
in Government — which the lapse of a century and a half 
from the Conquest had sufficed to bring about. 

amerced after the same manner, saving to him his wainage : and none of the 
aforesaid amercements shall be assessed, but by the oath of honest and lawful men 
of the vicinage.' — c. xv. 

* In our statutes, Magna Charta is printed as a law of the ninth year of 
Henry III. But it is in fact a transcript from the Parliament roll of 25 Edw. I. 
— Barrington's Observations on the Statutes. The Charter consisted properly of 
two documents — the Great Charter, and the Charter of the Forests. Both were 
confirmed by Edward in the year above mentioned. It is remarkable that our 
great law writers, Bracton, Fleta, and Briton, who became conspicuous in the 
age following that of the Great Charter, make little use of that document. Was 
it that even such men were not fully alive to the acquisition that had been made ; 
or was it that to them, as lawyers, popular liberty was a subject of less interest 
than scientific law ? 

Vol. I.— 22 



CHAPTEK V. 

THE CONQUEST IN ITS KELATION TO THE CHUKCH. 

B chap 5 11 * ^P^O changes materially affecting the character of the 
origiTof Anglo-Saxon church took place soon after the Conquest. 

courts. iritual William substituted Normans for Saxons, in the manner 
described, in the chief bishoprics and abbeys. He also 
instituted the tribunals since known in our history under 
the name of the spiritual courts. Among the Anglo-Saxons, 
the clergy and laity acted very much together, both in the 
making of law and in its administration. Thanes and eccle- 
siastics sat on the same bench, not only in the Witanage- 
mote, but in the County Court. But on the Continent, the 
clergy had long been in possession of their separate eccle- 
siastical courts, distinct from the courts of the laity. As 
the objects of which those separate courts professed to take 
cognizance, were such only as related to the cure of souls, 
it was not unnatural that the great law in such courts 
should be the canon law. But inasmuch as human respon- 
sibility has to do, not only with everything directly religious, 
but with everything moral, it would not be difficult to 
attract to such tribunals a multitude of cases not at first 
contemplated as belonging to them. Marriages, wills, and 
a host of questions resulting from them, or resembling them, 
were claimed as questions proper to be determined by this 
spiritual authority. And as the law of these courts was a 
distinct law, and as the men who administered it became a 
distinct order of judges, it seemed only a fitting sequence 
to such a policy, that the clergy should account themselves 
as not amenable, in any circumstances, to the tribunals of 



THE CONQUEST EST ITS RELATION TO THE CHUKCH. 339 

the laity. Such a subjection of the spiritual to the worldly, B c££^F' 

it was maintained, must be a subjection of the greater to 

the less. The Conqueror was far from meaning that the 
clergy should carry their notions to such lengths. He 
wished to purchase their attachment, and to use them as 
counterpoise to the undue influence of his nobles. But they 
were not to be bribed. They clung to the independent 
power thus ceded to them. So, William laid up stores of 
vexation for those who should come after him.* 

Two other changes in relation to the English church, J t ™"?" t V; n 
scarcely less considerable than those above named, belong j^*^ 6 ^ 
to this period. The doctrine of transubstantiation was now cler ^- 
to become an acknowledged dogma with the English clergy, 
and vigorous efforts were to be made to enforce upon them 
the law of celibacy. The tendency of both these move- 
ments was manifestly towards the increase of clerical power. 
In the eucharist, according to the doctrine of transubstan- 
tiation, the humblest priest was supposed to achieve the 
greatest of miracles. In the vow of celibacy, relation to 
the church was accepted in place of all family relations, and 
in precedence of all imaginable relations. Every priest, 
according to the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the 
elaborated sacramental theory to which that doctrine gave 
such terrible completeness, became a functionary possessed 
of power the most mysterious and unlimited ; and it was 

* Seldeni Analect. 130. Notoz Eadmer. 168, 187. Wilkin's Concilia, i. 
199. Reeve's Hist, of Eng. Law, i. c. 2. The language of the ordinance issued 
by the Conqueror is as follows : ' That no bishop nor archdeacon shall hence- 
forth hold place de legibus episcopalibus in the Hundred court, nor submit to the 
judgment of secular persons any cause which relates to the cure of souls : but 
that whosoever is proceeded against for any cause or offence, according to the 
episcopal law, shall resort to some place which the bishop shall appoint, and 
there answer to the charge, and do what is right towards God and the bishop, not 
according to the law used in the Hundred court, but according to the canons and 
the episcopal law." 

Giannone, in his Civil History of Naples, has given a summary of the pre- 
texts of the clergy in making these encroachments. ' All appeals,' says the his- 
torian, ' being carried to Rome, care was taken to enlarge the jurisdiction of the 
episcopal court, and to extend the cognizance of the ecclesiastical judges over 
more persons and more causes, so that little was left to the secular magistrates 
to trouble themselves about. However, Frederic II., not willing to see some 
enormous crimes of the clergy go unpunished, was wont frequently to chastise 
them ; but Clement, in the conditions of the investiture granted to Charles, 
would have it stipulated that the clergy should not be sued before a secular judge, 
either in civil or criminal cases, except in those which concerned fiefs.' — Bk. 
xix. 8 3. 



340 



NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 

4 



book hi. on ly consistent that men supposed to be possessed of au- 

thority extraordinary, should be separated from ordinary 

men by some strong lines of demarcation. Not that the 
body of the clergy were hypocrites in professing to regard 
the doctrine of transubstantiation as a doctrine essential to 
salvation, and the law of celibacy as a pure and Christian 
law for the priesthood. Far from it. Had not their belief 
on these points been general and sincere, ambitious men 
could not have used them so effectually to the purposes to 
which they were applied. In ecclesiastical history, the 
policy of the few becomes strong, only too commonly, 
through the fanaticism of the many. By such means, the 
clergy of every nation in Europe became one body, as no 
other class of men had ever become. The young became 
their spiritual offspring in baptism, and the life so imparted 
ceased not to be dependent on their services until the ex- 
treme unction, or final absolution, gave it perfectness. On 
this ground, they claimed to be accepted as the fatherhood 
of Christendom. Nations were composed of their children. 
Kings owed them a filial reverence and submission*. This 
was the advanced ground to which clerical pretensions had 
attained in the eleventh century. It was pretension rest- 
ing professedly on a mysterious and spiritual basis, but used 
to a large extent to ends which were not spiritual. 

Lanfranc, whose name is so conspicuous in this portion 
of our history, was a native of Lombardy. His family was 
of senatorial rank. Having studied assiduously at Pavia, 
he became distinguished by his knowledge of law, and by 
his efforts as an advocate and a teacher. In 1010, from 
some unknown cause, he migrated, with a considerable 
number of his pupils, into Normandy, and settled as a 
teacher at Avranches. His power of acquisition, and his 
general capacity, were of a high order. His taste for learn- 
ing disqualified him for seeking distinction in military life, 
and the church, in consequence, presented the only channel 
through which success, in the measure of his ambition, 
could be realized. In 1042, when forty years of age, he 
relinquished his vocation as a lay teacher at Avranches, 
and became a monk in the poor abbey of Bee. The abbey 



Lanfranc. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHUECH. 341 

was a very recent, as well as a very poor foundation, and book hi. 

the monks who seem to have been as vulgar as they were 

poor, are said to have looked on the brother who was so 
much in advance of them with great jealousy. But Lan- 
franc brought reputation to the abbey, both by the strict- 
ness of his life, and by his learning ; and, rather than lose 
the advantage of his residence, the fraternity were at length 
disposed to make him their abbot. When invited to be- 
come archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc had been for some 
time abbot of Caen, and must have been in an advanced 
age. As archbishop, he spared no pains to assimilate the 
English church in all things to the Roman, as the Roman 
church then stood.* Everything commemorative of Anglo- 
Saxon piety tended to nourish Anglo-Saxon patriotism, and 
on that ground was disparaged by the Anglo-lN"ormans. 
Lanfranc participated in this feeling. He spoke with con- 
tempt of the learning, and piety, and customs of the Eng- 
lish, even of their saints and martyrs. But in truth, though 
the name of Lanfranc has descended to us almost without 
reproach, we feel bound to say that his worldly wisdom 
seems to have been greatly in advance of his piety ; and 
that the facts of his history, as a whole, force upon us the 
impression, that he could descend to artifice, not to say 
craft, to accomplish his purpose, and that his inordinate 
ambition is as little to be doubted as his knowledge and 
sagacity. When the marriage of William and Matilda was 
contemplated, Lanfranc opposed it as unlawful ; but he 
afterwards won the favour of the duke by preparing the way 
for that event. At one time, he saw the doctrine of the 
eucharist very much as Berengarius saw it ; but he subse- 
quently distinguished himself as the great antagonist of his 
former friend on that point. When invited to become arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, he delivered all sorts of protests 
against the appointment ; but, as primate of the English 
church, he was not prepared to relinquish a vestige of the 
rights or emoluments of that position. All this, and more, 

* In a letter to pope Alexander, dated 1072, he addresses the pontiff as the 
person to whom the holy church throughout the whole world has been assuredly 
committed. — Wilkins, Concilia, i. 326. 



342 N0KMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B cha^ 5 IL ma ^ acmi it of satisfactory explanations, but the explanations 

are not given.* 

trineoT Before the time of Lanfranc, the doctrine of transubstan- 

g^"t" a b t : on tiation was a sort of ultramontane doctrine, which had not 
thedwwne been more than partially received in Europe. The Anglo- 
church of Saxon clergy knew nothing of the word transubstantiation ; 
England. an( ^ j£ ^ e y k new anything of the dogma afterwards denoted 
by that word, that dogma had not a place among the 
acknowledged doctrines of their own church. 

Elfric, a contemporary of St. Dunstan, and an ecclesi- 
astic of much celebrity in his time, has spoken in some of 
his epistles concerning the nature of the eucharist in a man- 
ner which repudiates incidentally, but most distinctly, the 
ideas regarding it, which became subsequently the generally 
acknowledged doctrine of the church. This letter was ad- 
dressed to W ulfstan, archbishop of York ; and, as its trans- 
lation into the vernacular language was in obedience to the 
request of that prelate, the document must be admitted to 
be of no mean authority. According to this writer, the 
' housel (host) is Christ's body, not bodily, but spiritually — 
not the body which He suffered in, but the body of which 
He spake when lie blessed the bread and wine a night 
before his sufferings. The apostle,' he observes, ' lias said 
of the Hebrews, that they did all eat of the same ghostly 
meat, and they all did drink of the same ghostly drink. 
And this, he said, not bodily, but ghostly, Christ being not 
yet born, nor his blood shed, when that the people of 
Israel ate that meat, and drank of that stone. And the 
stone was not (a stone) bodily, though he said so. It was 
the same mystery in the old law, and they did ghostly sig- 
nify that Gospel housel of our Saviour's body which we 
consecrate now.' 

In a homily by this same Elfric, appointed to be read 
to the people in the language spoken by them, the good 
abbot repeats the doctrine of the above passage, in many 
forms, and with illustrations that could hardly be mistaken, 
the substance being, that nothing in this service was to be 

* Lanfranci Opera. Vila Lanf. Ordericus, lib. iv. Malmes. de Req. 
lib. i. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 343 

understood bodily (or literally), ' but that all was to be mi- book iil 

derstood gliostly (spiritually).' Lanfranc's zeal in support 

of the new doctrine was only in harmony with his general 
policy. 

The celibacy of the clergy, as we have intimated, was 
an article of discipline to which the church of Rome attach- 
ed great importance at this juncture. To put an end to the 
contrary practice was one of the great reforms to which 
Gregory YII. had applied himself with the sagacity and 
energy which had distinguished his pontificate. In the 
scheme of this pontiff, every primate of a kingdom was, 
or ought to be, the most kingly person in it. While to 
himself it pertained to be the king of all kings, in things 
spiritual and temporal, every crown being properly, in his 
view, a fief holden from his crown. In pursuance of this 
theory, he called on the Conqueror to render feudal and 
filial homage to him for the kingdom of England. The 
answer of William was a blunt rebuke, which prevented any 
repetition of that claim in his time.* But, as we have 
stated, the clergy could not be expected to be duly subser- 
vient to this scheme so long as they were allowed to marry, 
and to be connected by so many natural sympathies with 
the secular communities around them. 

In a council convened in Winchester, over which Lan- Proceeding* 
franc presided, it was resolved that such of the clergy as married 

. 7 clergy. 

were then married should be allowed to retain their wives ; 
but the unmarried were forbidden to marry, and the bishops 
in future were not to ordain any man who had a wife.f 
The above concession in favour of the married clergy sug- 
gests that they must then have formed a numerous class. 
In a council assembled in Westminster in 1102, over which 
Anselm presided, a canon was adopted which enjoined celi- 
bacy on the clergy in the most absolute terms, requiring 
the married priests to put away their wives. Six years 
later, at a council in London, in which the king and the 
nobility, as well as the prelates, were present, laws still 
more severe were passed on this subject. The priests and 

* Seldeni Notce ad Eadmer. 104. — Dupin, Cent, XL c. 5. 
\ Spelman, Condi, ii. 13. 



344 N0KMAN3 AND ENGLISH. 

b ook hi. their wives, who continued together, were declared guilty 
of adultery, excommunicated, and whatever they possessed 
was pronounced a forfeiture to the bishop of the diocese.* 
So the principle gradually gained ground, and it was stead- 
ily insisted on, until the usage of the English church became 
conformable in this respect to the usage which had become 
general. Of course, in this protracted and bitter contro- 
versy — for such it everywhere proved to be — the zealous 
churchmen of the age assigned all sorts of reasons in aid of 
their policy, rather than the great reason by which the 
more sagacious of them appear to have been influenced. 
"With some, this supposed purity of the ministers of religion 
was no doubt viewed as indispensable to the purity of 
everything belonging to their office. But others were less 
simple-minded, and flattered themselves that church power 
would be safe in the measure in which it should be made 
to be the one object of life with the churchman. 

Lanfranc died in 1089, two years after the accession of 
William Rufus. "William kept the see of Canterbury vacant 
for several years, in common with many other sees and 
abbeys, simply that he might appropriate their revenues 
to his own uses. But early in 1093 the king became dan- 
gerously ill, his conscience became alarmed, and measures 
were taken by his order to fill up the ecclesiastical vacan- 
cies. The see of Canterbury again passed into the hands 
of an Italian, in the person of Anselm, a native of Aosta 
in Piedmont. 

Anscim. Anselm was then about sixty years of age. He had 

been a monk in the abbey of Bee, the friend of Lanfranc, 
and his coadjutor in his labours as a teacher. After the 
removal of Lanfranc from Bee, Anselm became abbot. To 
much of the literary fame of his predecessor, he added a 
higher reputation for sanctity ; and as a theologian. He 
expressed himself as most unwilling to accept the new dig- 
nity proffered to him. He told his friends that he saw little 
but discord as likely to arise between himself and the king. 
Nor did it require any great penetration to see the proba- 
bilities of the future in that light. The temper of the king 

* Ibid. ii. 23, 29; Wilkins, Condi, i. 338; Eadmer, 91, 94. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 345 

was arbitrary, violent, and rapacious. Anselm was not cov- b °°k I ^ 1 
etous nor, in the ordinary sense, worldly ; but lie was bent 
on extending and augmenting the privileges of his order — 
the power and grandeur of the hierarchy. In Lanfranc 
there was much of the broad and flexible intelligence which 
belongs to the man of the world. He was both scholar and 
statesman — one of a large class of men who attained to this 
double eminence during the Middle Age. But Anselm 
was a man of a more scholastic intellect, more of a devotee, 
and, from his narrower range of thought, more conscientious, 
and more obstinate. As commonly happened with men of 
his description, the authority which he seemed most reluc- 
tant to accept, was an authority of which he was to the last 
degree jealous, and by no means disposed to resign, when it 
had once been assumed. 

It is not improbable that Anselm had enemies near the Dispute be- 

# x r.-i-i. tween An- 

person of the king;. Between the men about William Eufus, se,m and 

r & ' William 

and the new archbishop, there could be little in common. Eufus - 
The first complaint of the king was that the heriot paid by 
the primate — the fine to the crown on the introduction to a 
new fief — was not of the proper amount. But his anger 
became great, when he learnt that Anselm had presumed, 
on his own authority, to acknowledge the claims of pope 
Urban II. in preference to those of his rival. The king 
insisted that on all such questions it became the primate to 
wait for the judgment of his sovereign, and to conform him- 
self to that judgment when given. It had been provided 
by the Conqueror that the clergy should not acknowledge 
any pope but with his permission ; that they should not 
publish any letters from Rome until approved by him ; that 
they should not hold any council, or pass any canons, with- 
out his consent ; that they should not pronounce a sentence 
of excommunication on any of his nobles but with his sanc- 
tion ; and that no ecclesiastic should leave the kingdom at 
his own pleasure.* Anselm could assent to no such doc- 
trine ; and was a man, in consequence, who should never 
have become archbishop of Canterbury. Even that office, 
which he himself had received from the king, was not 

* Eadmer, 6 ; Seldeni Notce ad Eadmer. 104. Wilkins, Concilia, i. 199. 



34.6 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 5. 



Accession 
of Henry I. 



Dispute 
concerning 
investi- 
tures. 



valid, ill his view, until confirmed by the approval of the 
pope. The king, and the great majority of the English prel- 
ates, declared against the claims of Urban II., and thus the 
embroilment seemed to become hopeless. Not long after- 
wards, however, the king surprised Anselm by declaring 
himself favourable to the claims of Urban, and by stating 
that the pallium for his use as archbishop had been sent by 
his holiness. In these circumstances, the primate found 
himself obliged to accept of that mark of papal recognition 
from the hands of the king, in place of receiving it, as he 
had hoped, from the hands of the pope, as the supreme 
pastor, in person.* 

Bat the peace which seemed to be thus restored was not 
of long continuance. In the following year, the king charged 
the primate with having endangered the interests of the 
state by sending a less number of retainers to the aid of the 
crown, in a military exigency, than the crown was entitled 
to expect. In this affair, the ill mood of the king was not 
more conspicuous than the pride of the archbishop. An- 
selm sought, and at length obtained, permission to leave the 
kingdom. This was in 1097 ; and the archbishop continued 
an exile, in France or Italy, until the sudden death of the 
king in HOO.f 

According to the law of succession, Robert should have 
succeeded to his brother William. But at the moment 
when the throne became vacant, Robert was at a distance 
with the Crusaders, and his place was seized by his younger 
brother Henry. It became Henry, in these circumstances, 
to be mindful of everything that might tend to conciliate 
the nation, and especially the clergj\ He removed some 
obnoxious officers ; put an end to many irritating oppres- 
sions ; bound himself at his coronation by the oath of the 
Anglo-Saxon kings ; and, recalling Anselm from exile, re- 
ceived him with every mark of respect and favour.:): 

But a few days only after the arrival of the primate 
there were signs of an approaching storm. Henry called 
on the archbishop to render homage to him in the usual 

* Eadmer, 23-31. Malms, de Pontif. 124, 125. Anglia Sacra, i. 164. 
f Eadmer, 37 et seq. J 'ibid. 56. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 347 

form, by accepting the ring and crosier from his hands, as B q^ "^ 

the symbols of his investiture with the rank and temporal- 

ities of his see by the crown. Anselm, in place of comply- 
ing with this demand, declined to do so in the most explicit 
terms — referring the king to the decree of a council assem- 
• bled in Rome the year before, which declared, that any lay- 
man conferring investiture in that manner, and any priest 
accepting it, should by so doing incur the sentence of ex- 
communication.* Henry of course felt, that what a num- 
ber of ecclesiastics at Rome might exact, even with the 
pope at their head, and what it might become him as king 
of England to acknowledge, were very different tkings.f 

But the controversy which grew up in this way, between 
Anselm and Henry, had become a European controversy. 
It had provoked the most angry discussions, especially in 
Germany, where circumstances seemed to point to the em- 
peror as the most fitting person to sustain the rights of the 
civil power against this new form of assault upon it. The 
ceremony itself in this case was clearly a very trivial matter, 
but the interpretation put upon it by the court of Rome, 
and the uses to which it might be applied, were not trivial. 

The manner in which the popes had acquired their sup- 
posed right to interfere in the affairs of national churches, is 
a story which spreads itself over the history of centuries. 
From the fourth century downwards, every opportunity 
was seized to add to the number of precedents in favour of 
such interventions, and a precedent once gained was never 
forgotten. The history of the Anglo-Saxon church, in com- 
mon with that of nearly all churches, had furnished its share 
of convenient examples. The mission of Augustine and his 
monks originated with Pope Gregory ; and that pontiff had 
naturally much to do with the early history of Christianity 
in this country. Subsequently, Theodore, a monk of Tarsus, 

* Eadmer, 56. Wilkins, Concilia, i. 379-382. Pope Paschal instructed 
Anselm to excommunicate all persons, bishops or laymen, who should presume 
to act upon the king's views on this question. — Ibid. 

f Paschal complained bitterly to Henry, that even the nuncios of the apos- 
tolic see were not allowed to enter England without a royal warrant, and that 
cases of appeal to Rome from the English clergy had ceased. Henry proceeds 
so far as to counsel the pope to be more moderate, lest his children should lose 
patience, and be found to withdraw themselves from his obedience. 



348 normans and English. 

E chap 5 IL was reee i ve( i as archbishop of Canterbury, on the recom- 

■ mendation of the pope. Wilfrid, by his several appeals to 

Rome, of which mention has been made, did much to make 
the idea of its appellant jurisdiction and spiritual sover- 
eignty familiar to the mind of the English. The many 
English kings, moreover, who went on pilgrimage to the 
supposed shrines of the apostles in the Eternal City, con- 
tributed in so doing towards laying a foundation for the 
extravagant claims of the papacy which followed. The ec- 
clesiastical customs of Europe all drifted in the same direc- 
tion. 

So elated did the papacy become by these signs of its 
growing power, that, before the close of the eleventh century, 
the pontiffs aspired, as we have seen, not only to the place 
of kings, but claimed to be possessed of a dignity higher 
than any imaginable on earth. It is at the same time clear 
that the man affecting to be possessed of such a sovereignty 
must have subjects, powerful subjects, obedient subjects, 
and many of them. To gain such subjects, the aspirant 
must have official rank to confer, large wealth to distribute. 
The patrimony of the successor of St. Peter, in the mean- 
while, is very small. Hence, if rank and wealth are to be 
at the disposal of a pope on a large scale, the rank and 
wealth must come from the different national churches 
which profess submission to his rule. But how may the 
requisite hold on such possessions be secured ? 

The reasoning of the far-seeing Gregory VII. was, that 
the offices of metropolitans, bishops, and abbots, the great 
prizes of the church, being all spiritual offices, are such as 
should not, from their nature, be supposed to be conferred, 
in any sense, by the temporal prince. The pontiff is the 
spiritual head of Christendom. From him alone can the 
right to exercise spiritual functions proceed. But this cus- 
tom of receiving the ring and crosier from the hands of a 
layman, is manifestly a receiving of the emblems of spir- 
itual office from hands not spiritual. This unseemly usage 
should be suppressed. This accomplished, something more 
than a veto on all such appointments will accrue to the 
Roman see. The initiative in the filling up of such vacan- 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 349 

cies will then naturally belong to the pontiff, or, at least, book hi. 

such a proceeding on his part will be seen to be only con- 

sistent with the position ceded to him. Under the shelter 
of this plea, men may be largely introduced into such influ- 
ential positions, as a reward for services to the apostolic 
see, or with the understanding that such services are to be 
rendered. The prince may be left to require homage after 
the ordinary feudal manner, for the temporalities held from 
him ; but the investiture with office by means of the ring 
and crosier being once surrendered as belonging to the 
papacy, and not to any temporal power, a key to the wealth 
of every national church in Christendom will be in great 
part secured. 

The reader will see that in this controversy, the spiritual 
claims of the papacy are so used as to serve ends of no very 
spiritual description. How far Anselm saw the extent in 
which the priestly served as a covert for the worclly in these 
discussions, we know not. But nothing could exceed the 
obstinacy with which he laboured to uphold the pretensions 
of his order. During the next six years, the question at 
issue between the king of England and the archbishop of 
Canterbury, was argued several times, on either side, in 
Rome. Anselm made a journey thither to urge his own 
suit in person. But on all these occasions, the right of the 
king to grant investiture was repudiated and condemned. 
The utmost that could at length be obtained was, that on 
condition of the king's consenting to abstain from this cere- 
mony in future, the archbishop would forthwith remove the 
sentence of excommunication from all persons who had 
incurred that censure during these disputes ; that he would 
also consecrate certain prelates and abbots whom he had 
hitherto refused to consecrate ; and that in all future elec- 
tions of bishops and abbots, the rights of the king in rela- 
tion to the temporalities of the benefice should be secured 
by homage, but not in the way of investiture by the use of 
the ring and crosier." 

Henry's patience had been exhausted by these conten- If^^f} 

pute con- 
* Eadmer, 53-91. Spelman, Condi, ii. 27. Acta Conciliorum, Labbe, cerningin- 
tom. vi. ed. Harduin. yestitures, 



350 NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. tions. In accepting these terms, he must have known that 
lie had virtually ceded the point at issue. But he persuaded 

and what " ■*• .... 

followed, himself that the concession made concerning his right in 
relation to the temporalities was not without its value, and 
on these conditions accordingly peace was concluded. It 
was quite true that nomination to a vacant bishopric could 
be of small value to the person nominated, without the sanc- 
tion of the king, who could alone confer the temporalities ; 
but it was no less true that there could be no bishop at all, 
no consecration at all, without the sanction of the pope, 
from whom alone, according to the admitted theory, spir- 
itual office could proceed. The Court of Rome had so far 
succeeded, as to become possessed of a pretext which was 
sufficient to secure many of the best appointments in the 
English church, from time to time, to its instruments. For, 
as may be supposed, the plea used to justify interference 
with the disposal of bishoprics, was soon used to justify in- 
terference with the disposal of benefices of less value. From 
this time to the time of the Reformation, the remonstrances 
called forth by encroachments of this nature are almost 
incessant in our history. 
Exemption Another feature of change in the ecclesiastical affairs of 
bousef°' ls England during this interval, consisted in the attempts 
made by some of the religious houses to place themselves 
under the immediate jurisdiction of the see of Rome, secur- 
ing by that means exemption from the jurisdiction of the 
English bishops. As these monastic brotherhoods were 
British subjects, and as their wealth was British wealth, 
great resistance was made to this innovation. But the re- 
sistance was not successful. The legatine authority in Eng- 
land, and the custom of appeals to Rome, had come to be 
so familiar to all men, that the distance between the Thames 
and the Tiber seemed to have been greatly diminished. 
The distance, however, was what it had always been ; and 
the exempt monks, we have reason to fear, were often only 
too mindful of the fact, that the greater the distance between 
themselves and their superior the greater would be their 
licence. Rome, on the other hand, was equally aware, that 
the effect of this custom would be to furnish a new pretext 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 351 

for a large meddling "with English affairs. Many abbeys B ° 0K " I - 

were in this manner declared independent. Great privi- 

leges were conferred on them. But it was notorious that 
all these privileges were matters of purchase. The court 
where the purchases were made had become the most venal 
in Europe. In process of time, however, it was discovered 
that the rule of the king and of the bishops might be in 
many respects less exacting and galling than that of the 
foreign court, and the tendency of such a discovery was to 
check this form of mischief. It should be added, that our 
kings sometimes took precedence of the pontiffs in confer- 
ring the exemption from episcopal oversight on monasteries. 
It was thus that some of the heads of those establishments 
rose to the dignity of mitred abbots.* 

The reign of Henry II. extends from 1145 to 1189. Of Thomas » 

• • i n Becket. 

this interval, the space from 1161 to 1170 was chiefly occu- 
pied in the struggle between this monarch and Thomas a 
Becket. The history of this extraordinary man is illustra- 
tive in many respects of his age. As we descend in our 
annals to the times of the Anglo-Normans, the materials of 
history become much more ample. Some of the most val- 
uable of these contributions consist in the lives of distin- 
guished men. But the men whose career is thus made 
known to us are mostly churchmen, and their actions, re- 
ported for the most part by admirers and partisans, are so 
overlaid with fiction and eulogy, as to render it necessary 
that some pains should be taken to distinguish between the 
invented and the probable. Becket is one of the men whose 
history has been written by writers of his own time, and in 
this spirit, f 

Following our guides on this subject discreetly, we may 
venture to say that Becket was the son of a London citizen 
in good circumstances ; that his mother was believed to be 
a woman of Saracen birth ; that young Becket's studies in 
London and Oxford were not very efficiently prosecuted ; 
that he was early distinguished, not as a man of learning, 

* Matt. Paris, Vit. Abbot. 46 et seq. Spelman, Concil. ii. 53-58. Petr. 
Bless, ep. 68. Chronicle of Battle Abbey. 

\ Becket had specially four biographers, Gervase, Fitzstephen, Robert de 
Monte, and Hoveden. 



352 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B 8nlr 5 11 ' ^ ut as a P erson °f great natural talent, and most agreeable 
manners ; that the favour he acquired with Theobald, arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, led to his being sent on an ecclesias- 
tical negotiation to Rome ; that he acquitted himself in that 
capacity successfully, and was rewarded with the richest 
parsonage in England ; that his views expanded with his 
success ; that he afterwards studied civil law at Bologna 
and Auxerre ; that on his return he was introduced to the 
king, became chancellor, and rose so high in the royal es- 
teem by the ability which he brought to that office, and by 
the charm of his companionship, that Henry and Becket 
grew to be on such terms of intimacy as rarely take place 
between sovereign and subject ; that the sumptuousness 
and splendour of the chancellor's establishment were such as 
had not hitherto been seen in any subject of the British 
crown ; that in his embassy to Paris to conduct negotiations 
for a royal marriage, his pageantries were the wonder of all 
who gazed upon them ; and that in this manner of life he 
continued until some way past forty years of age — a man 
more at home in hunting and hawking, in business of state, 
and even in the encounters of knighthood, than in the 
modest duties of a clergyman. 

It is at this stage in Becket's career that the see of Can- 
terbury becomes vacant, and to the amazement of every 
body, the king recommends his chancellor as the most fit- 
ting man to be placed at the head of the English church. 
The clergy oppose the nomination as unsuitable — as scarcely 
decent. But, after the delay of some thirteen months, 
Becket is duly consecrated. The secret of this proceeding 
no doubt was, that Henry had good reason to expect that 
Becket would be found as subservient to his wishes in rela- 
tion to the church, as he had been in relation to the state. 
Already, the chancellor had gone far enough in support of 
the king's policy to warrant this expectation.* But when 
the ecclesiastical sovereignty of England — for in such light 
the primacy was viewed — came within the sight of the 
chancellor, a change passed over the entire complexion of 

* Stephan. 23. Wilkins, Condi, i. 431. Lyttleton's Henry II. iii. 24. 
Petr. Bless, ep. 49. Turner's Hist. i. 237. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 353 

his thoughts and purposes. During the twelve months and book hi. 
more, indeed, which intervened between his nomination by — - 
the king, and his consecration, this change of spirit and in- 
tention is reserved as a secret to his own bosom. But the 
crosier once in his hand, it became to him as a sceptre of a 
spiritual kingdom, and, inasmuch as the superstitions of the 
age could alone give strength to a sovereignty of that order, 
he resolved to avail himself to the uttermost of power in 
that form. Securely inducted, he is the gay chancellor no 
longer. He is no more seen at the head of his festive board. 
He is no more the chief figure in a state pageant which is 
to fill even the court of Paris with wonder. He takes to 
sackcloth, and even that is allowed to be peopled with ver- 
min. The water he drinks is made nauseous by infusions 
of fennel. He washes the feet of poor men daily in his cell, 
and sends them away with his blessing and with money. 
He exposes his back to stripes. He affects to be a devout 
reader of the Holy Scriptures. He is supposed to be much 
in prayer. He wanders about in gloomy cloisters, musing 
and in tears. He diffuses his charities everywhere around 
him. But when he ministers at the altar, his coarse and 
filthy underclothing is covered with the most splendid vest- 
ments.* 

Had Becket been a young man, with a character only 
partially developed, it might have been less difficult to look 
on this change as sincere. Or had he been a weak man, 
liable to have been carried away by an ill-regulated imagi- 
nation, sensibility, and conscientiousness, belief in his hon- 
est intentions would have been possible. Or had this great 
apparent revolution in character been followed, as in the 
case of the ex-chancellor Turketel, by a life of unostenta- 
tious lowliness and piety, a charitable judgment of the phe- 
nomenon might have been admissible, f But Becket, as we 

* Steph. 24, 25. 

\ Turketel, if we may credit the account that has reached us concerning 
him, was a churchman who sustained the office of chancellor under Athelstan, 
Edmund, and Eldred, and had been engaged in the military as well as in the 
civil affairs of his time. In the midst of his popularity and power, he suddenly 
retired to the ruined abbey of Croyland, restored it, endowed it, and then passed 
nearly thirty years of his life in the humble and useful discharge of his duties as 
abbot.— Ingulf. 25-52. 

Vol. I.— 23 



35-i NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. have said, was now more than forty vears of age. He was 

any thing but a weak man. From this time, moreover, he 

never failed to give proof of being, as he had always been, 
one of the most haughty and ambitious men of his age. 
Change of object there was, but we see no change of char- 
acter. By whatever sophistries Beeket may have imposed 
upon himself, it is manifest that ambition lay at the basis 
of his proceedings. The aim of that ambition was nothing 
less than to be as great a man as the king of England him- 
self. 

The first step of the archbishop, in pursuance of his new 
policy, was to resign his chancellorship. This was an office 
commonly filled in those days by a churchman. Henry 
could hardly fail to interpret this change as ominous of 
mi ire. Tie was much displeased, and as the reason assigned 
by the primate was, that his episcopal duties were more 
than he could hope faithfully to discharge, Henry called 
upon him to resign his archdeaconry and his parsonage. 
It was assumed that an ecclesiastic with so tender a con- 
science could never wish to be in any sense a pluralist. 
Beeket had not expected such a move. He was by no 
means disposed to be obedient. But the will of the king 
was unalterable. The flattering reception subsequently 
given to Beeket by the pope at Tours came as oil on the 
flame of his ambition. On his return, he provoked great 
hostility by reviving some old claims to properties said to 
belong to the see of Canterbury, but which had passed long 
since into other hands. The king was called upon to resign 
to the archbishop the town and castle of Rochester; and 
the earl of Clare was summoned to surrender the castle of 
Tollbridge into his hands. Some lord had refused to admit 
a priest of the primate's nomination to a living. Beeket 
exc< tmmunicated him. Henry remonstrated ; but was haugh- 
tily informed that it did not belong to the king to say who 
should be visited with church censure or who should be 
absolved.* 

The grand strife, however, began when Henry, with the 
consent of his barons, proposed his scheme for placing the 

* Diceto, 563. Gervase, Act. Pont. 1670 Stephan. 25. Quadril. 



THE CONQUEST IK ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 355 

ecclesiastical affairs to the country on a more satisfactory B °°^ nt 
basis in relation to the crown. This scheme is contained in Co ^^T 
certain canons known in our history under the name of the ciTrendon. 
Constitutions of Clarendon. The design of these constitu- 
tions was to subject the clergy, on all questions relating to 
temporal matters, and concerning the interests of the laity, 
to the authority of the crown. The clergyman charged 
with a criminal offence might be tried in the bishop's court, 
but it must be with the cognizance of the king's court ; and 
should the accused be found guilty, it was required that he 
should be delivered to the magistrate, to be punished as 
though he were a layman. Becket insisted, that degrada- 
tion from office was a sufficient punishment in all such 
cases. Another constitution prohibited all appeals to Rome 
without the consent of the king ; another required that no 
dignified clergyman should leave the kingdom without the 
king's licence ; and another declared that no tenant-in-chief 
of the crown, no officer of the king's household or belong- 
ing to his demesne, should be excommunicated, or should 
have his lands laid under an interdict, without the king's 
knowledge and approval. These regulations sufficiently 
indicate the spirit and purpose of the king and his barons.* 
In the check thus laid on the assumptions of the clergy, 
no more was attempted than had been done by the Con- 
queror, when Hildebrand himself was on the throne. Nor 
was any thing further from the intention of "William than 
that clergymen, while excluded from the administration of 
secular law, should not themselves be subject to it. But if 
William I. had his reasons for taking this course, experience 
since that time had given Henry II. much more weighty 
reasons for adhering to it. Anselm had shown, how a pri- 
mate of the English church might use the authority of the 
papacy to contravene and humble the authority of the 
crown. The clergy, moreover, in this later period, had 
come to be so numerous, and were many of them so home- 
less, that according to the most credible testimony, a large 
portion of the crime of the country was known to have been 
perpetrated by them, and perpetrated for the greater part 

* Wilkins's Concilia, i. 435. 



35G NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B Sb^ & L w ^^ impunity, inasmuch as the delinquent ecclesiastic 
claimed to be amenable only to the tribunals of his order.* 
and object Nothing was more natural than that the court of Rome 

policy. kmgs should be opposed to the Constitutions of Clarendon. Wide 
was the distance between the position of national churches 
as defined by those constitutions, and as presented in the 
scheme of Hildebrand. Much has been written on this con- 
troversy between Becket and his sovereign, but nothing 
that has seemed to us fairly to apprehend the points really 
at issue. 

It may seem harsh for a layman, even in the person of 
a king, to attempt to give law to a churchman in the ad- 
ministration of church censures — and the king did say to 
the primate, you shall not excommunicate any of my nobles 
without my consent. But there was a reason for this inter- 
ference. Why were not churchmen content with having 
what were called spiritual censures simply spiritual ? Why 
were they so eager to connect civil penalties with such cen- 
sures, so as thereby to reduce the excommunicated man to 
the condition of an outlaw ? If the aid of the magistrate is 
to be invoked, that every sentence of this nature may be as 
much temporal as spiritual, is it very unreasonable that the 
civil power should claim to have something to do with the 
proceedings of the courts whence such sentences are issued ? 
It should be seen at a glance, that it was the temporal con- 
sequences allied with such censures that made the inter- 
ference of the temporal authority, not only reasonable, but 
imperative, if the temporal interests of the community were 
to be secure. In like manner, the law which required that 
the king should be cognizant of all communications between 
the clergy and the court of Rome, was based on the fact 
that the censures and interdicts issued by that power were 
of a nature to disturb, not only the ecclesiastical, but all 
the civil relations of the kingdoms where they were intro- 
duced. So, likewise, the temporalities in the keeping of the 
crown became the ground of its claim in regard to investi- 

* Acta Concil. Labbe, vi. 1603, 1604. Ilcrib. 22. Steph. S3. The king 
was assured by his judges that more than a hundred homicides had been com- 
mitted by clergymen during the first ten years of his reign, lesser offences being 
of course much more frequent. — Guil. Newbrig. lib. ii. c. 16. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 357 

tures. It was in the option of the clergy to relinquish those B g°K I 5 IL 

temporalities, and having so done, to claim independence 

of all secular interference with the election of churchmen 
to their spiritual office. But to take such a course was far 
from their thoughts. It is not too much to say that their 
policy in relation to civil power was uniformly, to become 
strong, in every possible way, by its means, and never to 
become weak by dividing authority with it, except when 
unavoidable. 

One of the best informed among living writers on Eng- 
lish history, has compared the conduct of our kings, in 
claiming the right of investiture, to the conduct of a sover- 
eign who should impose a mayor or a recorder on the city 
of London without the suffrage of its citizens.* But it is 
natural to ask — Did the ecclesiastics of the Middle Age op- 
pose the nomination of bishops by the crown because they 
wished them to be chosen by the people ? "We all know 
they meant nothing of the kind. The question between the 
bearers of the ' two swords,' in those days, was not, who 
shall be free, but to which of us shall the place of prece- 
dence belong ? Churchmen were always pleased when they 
could call in the magistrate, always much displeased when 
they found that by so doing they had called in a master. 
This was the source of Becket's displeasure — of the vexed 
life he lived after he became primate. He would have ac- 
cepted the magistrate as a coadjutor, but he was not pre- 
pared to acknowledge him as an equal, still less to bow to 
him as a superior, and the magistrate with whom he had to 
do was not prepared to enter into partnership with him on 
such terms. Social liberty is possible only as the civil 
power is supreme for civil purposes over all persons and 
causes whatsoever. 

It happened while this dispute between Becket and f h ™^jf s u ^ 
Henry was in progress, that a priest in Worcester was 
charged with seducing a young woman, and with having 
murdered her father, because he had presumed to remon- 
strate. Becket would not suffer even this miscreant to be 

* Palgrave's History of Normandy and England, i. Ill, 112. 



358 NOEMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B chap I 5 L delivered t° tne king's justice.* He found, however, that 

this high-handed policy was not acceptable either to the 

court or the country. At length, he promised to assent to 
the new regulations. But when required to do so publicly 
and formally, to the surprise of all present, he refused. The 
indignation of the king and of the parliament was great. 
Prelates and knights entreated him to submit, and when 
persuasion had proved fruitless, the anger expressed, and 
the show of weapons, were such as to menace the life of the 
obnoxious primate. Becket promised his signature once 
more. On the morrow, when this should have been given, 

Becket ap- he again refused, and declared that he should remove his 

Komo.* cause to the court of Rome. 

The source of this last decision is not difficult to discover. 
Becket had accepted the office of primate, knowing the in- 
tentions of the king, and hi' was now using that office to 
frustrate those intentions. Enough had happened to show 
that so deep was Henry's sense of injury, that no measure 
of concession in the future would now suffice t<> repair the 
mischiefs of the past. From this point, in consequence, the 
struggle became desperate — -a struggle, not lor compromise 
or adjustment, BO much as for victory. Henry might rely 
on his kingly authority, on the loyalty of his barons, and 
on the adhesion of many of the clergy. Becket hoped to 
oppose to this power the religious prepossessions of the age, 
the spiritual thunders of the papacy, and the jealousies, 
possibly, of foreign courts. 

So fixed and deep was the resentment of Henry, that 
more than one attempt of Becket to soften him had been 
repulsed. The impeachment of the archbishop which fol- 
lowed, in the parliament of Northampton, made it clear 
that the king meditated nothing less than his deposition. 
But the passions of Henry hurried him to excess. His pro- 
ceedings began to bear the aspect of persecution. Becket 
knew that the scale was turning in his favour. In their 
perplexity, the bishops had urged that the matter should be 
submitted to the judgment of the pope. Becket saw the 
advantage of this proposal, and appealed gladly from the 

* Stephan. 33. 



THE CONQUEST EST ITS EELATION TO THE CHUKCH. 359 

judgment of the king, the parliament, and even of his own B g 0K nt 
bishops, to the decision of the pontiff.* 

It was in disguise, and with much difficulty, that the His flight. 
primate now made his escape to the Continent. But the 
pope, to the great mortification of the fugitive, was not 
eager to espouse his cause. The pontiff knew that the 
antecedents of Becket were far from being in harmony with 
his present saintly pretensions. The issue of such a quarrel 
in such hands seemed doubtful. Much, too, there was, both 
in the position and in the personal character of the king of 
England, to constitute him a formidable antagonist. Hence, 
when Becket sent his deputies to Rome, praying that he 
might be allowed to appear before the pontiff in his own 
cause, to his surprise, his presence there was forbidden — 
lessons on moderation were read to him, and he was com- 
mended to the care of the abbot of Pontigny, that in the 
garb of a Cistercian monk he might conform for a time to 
the ascetic discipline of that order. 

After six years of exile, a hollow truce was concluded Apparent 
between Becket and Henry. This took place in Normandy, tion be- 
Becket suspected the king's sincerity, and his own restless "enry ami 
passions had been rather embittered than softened by his 
years of exile and adversity, f 

Much had been done during his absence, both by pre- Bucket's 

° <J *■ violent pro- 

lates and laymen, in defiance of his authority, and one of codings. 
his first acts after his apparent restoration was to send into 
England a series of excommunications which he had ob- 
tained from Borne, against the parties who had thus offended 
him. On Christmas day he added other anathemas to these, 
reading them himself with great bitterness of emphasis from 
the cathedral pulpit. In these proceedings there was an 
open violation of some of the conditions of peace on which 
the king had insisted as indispensable. Henry was still in 
Normandy. But tidings of these things reached him, and 
led him to bewail aloud the life of inquietude to which he 
seemed to be doomed so long as this troubler of his domin- 

f Acta Condi. Labbe, vi. 1610, 1611. Gervase, Chron. 1386-1392. Quad- 
ril. 25-27 Stephanides, 35-38. 

* His letters show this : see passages from them in Turner's Hist. i. 
260-266. 



360 



XORMANS A2sD ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 5. 



The Nor- 
man 

knishts 
make their 
appearance 
in Canter- 
bury. 



Death of 
Beckct. 



Henry's 

humilia- 
tion. 

Popular 
feeling In 
favor of 
Becket. 



ions should be allowed to live. Certain of his attendants 
put their own construction on this language. 

Several knights secretly withdrew from the court, and 
reached Canterbury by different roads. Beckct, if we may 
credit the accounts given by his partisans, faced the threat- 
ening aspect of these men unmoved — first in his own apart- 
ment, and afterwards in the cathedral. Their demand was 
that he should remove the sentences of excommunication 
which he had pronounced since his return on the bishops 
who had taken part with the king. This he sternly refused, 
except as they should promise that obedience to the deter- 
minations of the church which had hitherto been demanded 
from them in vain. The haughty tone and manner of this 
reply, and a rude thrust of one of the knights to a distance 
from his person, provoked the first blow. The wound in- 
flicted by it was Blight. But it was followed by a second, 
and a third, from other hands, and Beckct lay a dead man 
at the foot of the altar. 

We scarcely need remind the reader, how by reason of 
tli is foul deed Beckct rose from his true level, as an ambi- 
tious ecclesiastic, to the fictitious rank of a saint and a mar- 
tyr ; and how amidst the storm of reprobation poured forth 
on the perpetrators of this deed, Henry was constrained to 
do a base penance at the tomb of his old antagonist. 

Popular feeling, it is evident, was often in favour of 
Becket, especially towards the close of his career. If not 
more than half an Englishman, the feeling was that he was 
not a Norman. He was the first man not of that race who 
had risen to eminence and power since the Conquest, and 
his battle had been a battle with a proud Norman king. It 
is probable that these facts had some influence on the old 
Saxon feeling of the country, though Becket himself never 
appealed to any such feeling. The Saxons had seen the 
Normans use the English church to their own purposes, and 
it may not have been unpleasant to them to see retribution 
spring up from that quarter. It should be remembered 
also, that through the Middle Age, the influence of the 
clergy had been generally felt by the people to be favour- 
able, in many ways, to an amelioration of their condition. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 361 

With all their faults, the abbot and the bishop were, in ^h^" 1 

general, better masters than the knight or the baron. It is 

true, in the Becket controversy, the bishops were mostly 
with the king ; but the answer of the Saxon would be, that 
they were all alien bishops, and sycophants to the alien 
power which had advanced them. The most obvious source, 
however, of the popular sympathy in favour of Becket, is to 
be found in the superstition of the age. 

But in the person of Becket the last man of that descrip- ^° e s " lt; n ° f 
tion passed away from our history. The Wilfrids and Odos, trovers r- 
the Dunstans and Anselms of the past, had prepared the 
way for the appearance of such a man ; but such men are 
from this time men of the past. Our English kings have 
still to guard their rights against the encroachments of the 
papacy ; but in England, the mitre does not again attempt 
to divide empire with the crown. Wolsey was the servant 
of his king. His ambition was that of a statesman. The 
policy of Laud was more priestly. But it was not disloyal. 
Its object was to exalt the power of the crown at the cost 
of the liberties of the people. Henry suspended his reforms, 
but the battle had been fought, and the victory proved in 
the end to have been won. 

The ambition and venality of the court of Rome had£ han ? e . in 

•/ the policy 

become notorious to all men. Its anathemas had lost much aml in ^}: 

ence oi tno 

of their power. Men began to breathe more freely. Every P apal court> 
day, the natural sense of right in society seemed to be grow- 
ing stronger, and the ecclesiastical sophistries opposed to 
that feeling were becoming less available. The subsequent 
conduct of the papacy in exacting feudal homage from king 
John, and in condemning the Great Charter, and the men 
who had combined to secure it, deepened the disaffection 
towards that power. Its aims will soon cease to be those 
of a lofty ambition. Its love of money, and of the agreea- 
ble things which money may command, is about to become 
its master passion. 

Concerning the state of religion among the people, while state of re- 
such strifes were perpetuated by its ministers, we possess kfg°this Ur " 
little direct information. The inferior class of the Saxon pen 
clergy, who were allowed to retain their livings after the 



362 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. Conquest, would probably be assiduous in teaching and 

consoling their countrymen through the evil times that had 

come upon them. But the Norman clergy, while possessed 
of all the places of influence, were ignorant of the language 
of the people, and could neither teach themselves, nor know 
when they were taught by others. Nor was this incompe- 
tency of short duration. The foreigners were without affec j 
tion, either for the people, or for the tongue spoken by 
them. When more than a hundred clergymen were be- 
lieved to have been guilty of homicide within the space of 
ten years, the order must have sunk very low, and the re- 
ligious feeling that could have tolerated such enormities 
must have been such as we can hardly imagine. If this 
was the state of affairs under such a king as Henry II., what 
must have been the condition of things under Stephen? 
We look back to the reigns of the Conqueror and Henry I. 
as intervals of comparative order. But these terms could 
he applied only partially to the reign of "William ; and in 
the reign of Henry, Anselm, pious as he no doubt was, had 
become too much committed to disputes with the king, to 
have time left in which to do much for the piety of the peo- 
ple. The fact that Henry II. should have deemed it advisa- 
ble and safe to raise such a man as Becket to the primacy, 
suggests much concerning the religious ideas of the age — 
for even those who learnt to worship the archbishop as a 
saint and a martyr, were bound to confess that his sanctity 
must have come to him after his elevation, the evidence of 
its existence before that event being wholly wanting. In 
short, there is scarcely any thing on the surface of ecclesias- 
tical affairs through the whole of this period to lead us to 
think favourably of the piety that might be found beneath. 
Nevertheless, we can believe that piety was there. The 
heart of man, and especially the heart of woman, will -crave 
the religions in some form, and examples of the most unsel- 
fish virtue, and of sincere religious feeling, may often be 
found where the superficial least expect to find them. In 
such circumstances, a spiritual chemistry may be at work, 
sufficient to extract for itself enough of nutriment to sus- 
tain a truly religious life, from the midst of elements which 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 363 

may seem to be rather poisonous than wholesome. As B £ 0K in - 

nearly five hundred religious houses made their appearance 

in England under these early Norman kings, we must sup- 
pose the action of strong religious feeling somewhere. Most 
of those foundations were rural establishments. To find 
them, you have to follow the course of rivers and streams, 
and to penetrate into the winding and often obscure valleys 
of the country. Their inmates, it must be remembered, 
consisted mainly of pious women, who had not found hap- 
piness in the relations.in which women ordinarily find it ; or 
of men from the ranks of the laity, to whom the experiences of 
this life, or the hope of a better, have been such as to dispose 
them to covet the seclusion and constraint of such a home. 
Every such establishment was a hospitable resting-place 
to the traveller ; a school for those who would be skilled in 
agriculture ; one of the few places where books might be 
found, and education obtained ; a pattern of what might be 
done by association and order ; and a local power and 
authority, which, without statute or canon to plead in sup- 
port of its usage, arbitrated differences, and promoted har- 
mony among the surrounding population.* Concerning the 
good general influence of monasteries in the space of Eng- 
lish history now under review, there is no room to doubt : 
but concerning the religion to be found in them we cannot 
epeak with the same confidence. We have evidence that the 
'.eligious feeling in such communities did not necessarily 
nclude anything distinctively Christian — anything beyond 
a pagan sort of reverence for some patron saint.f But 

* In many cases, authority in civil matters was given to the abbey or mon- 
astery by royal charter, as to the towns of those times. Thus the Chronicle of 
Battle Abbey records : l The men of the town, on account of the very great dig- 
nity of the place, are called burgesses. If these in any way deviate from custom- 
ary right, and be sued for penalties, the cause shall be tried before the abbot or 
monks, or their deputies, and upon conviction they shall pay a fine of 50 shil- 
lings, according to the royal custom, and give a bond at the discretion of the 
president. When a new abbot comes to office, the burgesses shall pay him 100 
Bhillings for their liberties.' (20, 21.) The same record describes certain ser- 
vices — as work in the meadow and the mill, and making malt, which the towns- 
men and others were to render to the abbey on certain equitable conditions. 
Many persons, it is said, were brought out of the neighbouring counties, 
and some from beyond seas, to hold the abbey lands, and ' to prepare them- 
selves habitations, according to the distribution of the abbots and monks.' — 
Ibid. 32. 

f Chronica Jocelini de Brahelonda. Camden Society. 1840. Nothing 
could well be more heathenish than the picture of convent life furnished by this 



364 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B c25." L though we see that the communistic interests of such a 
brotherhood might he rigorously sustained, with scarcely 
anything really Christian to sustain it, we have proof that 
the piety existing in such connexions was often deeply sin- 
cere, and much more scriptural than might have been 
expected." "We have said that books Were to be found in 
the English monasteries, and, we may add, that commonly 
they were books there to be read, and that among them, in 
most instances, was a Bible, or at least portions of the Scrip- 
tures. In those days no one attempted to set up the au- 
thority of the sacred writings against the authority of. 
the church ; and any one, accordingly, having access to the 
Vulgate, and capable of reading it, was at liberty to read 
it, either in whole or in part.f 

Profn-essof "With regard to towns and cities, every centre of that 

intelligence ° , . 

in towns, description became, in those early times, a large free- 
school, in which the artisan and the trader contributed day 
by day to the education of each other. It was in those 
places, as we find all over Europe, that men first began to 

long narrative, the narrative in which our contemporary Mr. Carlyle has found 
so much to interest him. 

* Maitland on the Dark Ages, a book which should be read, though not less 
one-sided than the books it censures. 

f To the negative piety of the abbot Sampson in the Jocelin Chronicle, we 
may oppose the more Christian goodness of Odo, prior of Canterbury, who be- 
came abbot of ISatfle in 1175. The following description relates to him from 
the time of his entrance on the last named office. It is written by a contem- 
porary and an eye-witness, and subject no doubt to the attestation of the house. 
' Now he began to be more devout than ever in his prayers, more ardent in 
divine contemplations, inure frequent in his vigils, more energetic in exhorta- 
tions, and in works worthy of imitation, and more frequent in preaching ; thus 
becoming a pattern to all of a holy life in word and deed. His hospitality knew 
no respect of persons. The abbey gates stood open for all comers who needed 
refreshment or lodging. For those persons whom the rule of the establishment 
forbade to sleep within the abbey, he provided entertainment without the circuit 
of its walls. In all divine offices in the abbey, in reading and in meditation, he 
associated with the brethren in the cloisters ; he took his food in the refectory ; 
in short, he was as one of themselves. In his carriage, his actions, and his 
habits, there was nothing of pride, nothing that savoured of levity. As to his 
expositions of the Holy Scriptures, and his treatises, whatever the subject, and 
■whether reduced to writing or preached for the edification of his hearers — some- 
times in Latin, sometimes in French, and often for the benefit of the unlearned 
common people in the mother tongue — he was so lucid, so eloquent, and so 
agreeable to all, that what appeared obscure, or had been but imperfectly handled 
by the ancient doctors, he rendered perfectly intelligible. And the devotion of 
the faithful was excited so much the more, because they saw that lie did not 
preach one thing and practise another ; for what he uttered with his lips he 
carried into effect in his conduct. — Chronicle of Battle Abbey, translated by 
Mark Antony Lower, M.A., 178, 179. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHUKCH. 365 

question the troth of the received dogmas of religion, and ^J. 1 ? 
the sanctity of usages connected with them. And it should 
be marked, as a significant fact, that this tendency towards 
scepticism never came alone — religious faith and religious 
feeling of some kind, often branded as heresy, never failed 
to come up beside it. The restlessness thus indicated was 
not so much on the side of no religion, as on the side of 
something better. Evidence enough on this point will pre- 
sent itself as we come lower down in our annals. Until 
the beginning of the thirteenth century the towns of Eng- 
land were in the hands of the secular, or parochial clergy, 
who were obliged to adapt themselves in a measure to the 
growing tendencies of feeling and thought among towns- 
men. 

It was during the reign of Iienrv II. that a small band Thirty men 

~ ~ " and women 

of strangers made their appearance in England, whose re- ^^ c ^ n " 
ligious singularities soon attracted the attention of the clergy, heretics. 
They consisted of about thirty men and women, and spoke 
the German language. One of their number, named Gerard, 
was recognised by them as their pastor. Gerard was a 
man of learning, and answered for the rest. But as we 
know nothing of these people except as they are described 
by their enemies and persecutors, it is not easy to speak 
with certainty concerning their religious opinions. It is 
clear, however, that they professed themselves believers in 
the doctrine of the apostles ; that they did not believe in 
the invocation of saints, in the existence of purgatory, or in 
the efficacy of prayers for the dead ; that on these grounds 
they were condemned as heretics in a council at Oxford ; 
that they were publicly whipped through the streets of that 
city ; and, stripped of nearly the whole of their clothing, 
in the depth of winter, were turned into the open country, 
under an interdict which forbade all persons, on pain of ex- 
communication, to render them the slightest assistance. 
They all died a lingering death from cold and want ! So 
began the punishment of death on account of religious 
opinions in our history. This was in 1159.* 

* Guil. Newbrig. lib. ii. c. 13. Brompton Col. 1050. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CONQUEST IN ITS EELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 

chap. 6.' ^I^IIE immediate effect of the Conquest must have been 
injurious -I- greatly injurious to industry. For a while, the reign 
conquest of the Norman was a reign of terror. Property was retained 

on industry. , , a* .,,.,. 

on sufferance. It is not usual for one man to sow with dili- 
gence when another may reap. Nor do we expect the 
traffic of towns to prosper while the spoliator is at hand, 
and in a mood to appropriate the gains of an industry not 
his own. Much of the land of England passed into the 
hands of middle-men, who farmed it from the great land- 
holders, and whose exactions were merciless. Whole coun- 
ties in consequence ran almost to waste, and many of the 
best towns in England were more than half destroyed. 
Gianni But it became the conquerors, for their own sake, to 

order. put some limit to these devastations, and to do something 
towards giving the security of law to person and property. 
By degrees the lands of England are again brought under 
cultivation, and the country which, as found by the Con- 
queror, was described by his followers as a ' storehouse of 
Ceres,' * is found again producing so much corn as to dis- 
pose its owners to pay a tax to the king, for permission to 
export it.f But the tax received for the export of corn was 
small compared with that levied on the exports of tin and 
lead. The lead with which all large buildings in the neigh- 
bouring continent were covered, was obtained chiefly from 
England. The mines of Devon and Cornwall soon came to 

* Guil. Pictav. 110. 
f Madox, Hist. Ex. c. xiii. 323, xviii 530. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 367 

be an important source of revenue.*"" Slaves and horses were book iii. 

alike articles of merchandise in England at this time. The 

slaves, or serfs attached to the soil, might be sold as chattels 
in the market-place at the pleasure of their owner ; and 
parents unable or unwilling to support their children, might 
dispose of them in the same manner. Strange enough, it 
was to the Irish chiefly that the English slave-dealer of the 
twelfth century sold his human commodities. In 1102, a 
law was passed which prohibited ' this wicked trade of sel- 
ling men in markets like brute beasts.' But the traffic, if 
somewhat checked, was still carried on.f Much more legit- 
imate was the trade of our good ancestors in wool, woollen 
yarn, and leather. Considerable sums were paid annually 
to the crown for licence to export these articles. The 
troubled state of England during the thirteenth century was 
unfavourable to this department of production. Much of 
the wool of England was sent in those days into Flanders, 
to be there woven into cloth. $ 

The imports to be placed over against these exports, imports. 
were French wines,§ spices and drugs from the East, linen, 
silks, tapestries, and furs ; besides metals — gold, silver, iron, 
and steel. Corn also was largely imported in times of 
scarcity, and lodged in warehouses on the Thames. || The 
wine merchants sold their merchandise in their ships, or in 

* Madox. Hist. Excheq. xviii. 530,531. Rymer, Fctdera, i. 243. 

f Eadmer. iii. 68. Girald. Cambrens Hibernia Expuqnat. i. c. 18. Rymer, 
i. 90. Liber Niger Scaccarii, art. Danegeldo. When Henry II. invaded Ire- 
land all the English slaves were manumitted, the clergy having declared that 
the calamities which had come upon them were the punishment of the sin of 
having purchased them. — Wilkins, Concil. i. 470. 

\ Anderson's History of Commerce, a.d. 1172. There is evidence that 
broadcloths were made in England in the time of Richard I. — Ibid. a.d. 1197. 
Madox, Hint. Excheq. c. xviii. 

§ England produced its own wine from the grape at this time.--Madox, c. 
x. Anderson, a.d. 1140, 1154. 

|| Madox, c. xviii. Considerable effort was made in the reign of Richard I. 
to establish a strict uniformity of weights and measures throughout the king- 
dom. The penalty for offence in this matter was that the offender should be 
imprisoned, ' his chattels seised to the king's use,' and that he should not be 
set at liberty 'except by our lord the king, or his chief justice.' One other 
provision in this statute, shows further, the doubtful morality sometimes to be 
found among the buyers and sellers of this period. ' It is furthermore forbid- 
den to any trader throughout the whole kingdom, to hang up before his shop 
red or black cloths, or penthouses, or anything else, by means of which the 
sight of the purchaser is often deceived in choosing a good cloth.' — Iloveden, 
a.d. 1197. 



868 



NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 6. 



The marts 
—the 
Cinque 
Ports. 



The Jews. 



cellars near the river ; * and Hoveden, a contemporary, 
assures ns that, by the licence given to this article of impor- 
tation, ' the land was tilled with drink and drunkards.' f 
The rich silks worn by ladies of rank, and the tapestries 
and other ornaments with which the apartments of the 
wealthy were decorated, were mostly of foreign manufac- 
ture.:}: 

The great marts of the twelfth century were of course in 
the great towns and cities. The Cinque Ports — Hastings, 
Dover, Ilythe, Romney, and Sandwich — were vested with 
special privileges, on condition of their supplying the king, 
when required, with a stipulated force in shipping and sea- 
men. Several other seaports were admitted to the same 
privileges on the same conditions. But the ' five ports ' 
continued to be recognised as the ' five ports,' the other 
places being reckoned as auxiliaries to them. The great 
ports of this period, however, Avere London and Bristol. 
But Rochester, Warwick, Yarmouth, Lynn, Lincoln, Grims- 
by, "Waynfleet, Boston, and Stamford, were all places of 
much commercial importance. The same may be said of 
York, until the massacre of the Jews there in the time of 
Richard I., an event which brought a desolation upon that 
city from which it never more than partially recovered.§ 

The Conquest filled the land with foreign soldiers, and 
was an inlet to foreigners of all descriptions, especially to 
the foreign merchant. The Jews were among the first to 
seize on the new opening for traffic. They were soon to be 
found in all places of trade.^" In the Jew, the intelligence 
which has distinguished the Caucassian race was shut up to 
one thing — to trade, and, especially to money-lending, and 
no marvel if their skill in such matters was such as to dis- 
tance all competition. Such was the fact. They were 
spread like a network over Europe, in constant communi- 
cation with each other, and always in command of capital. 
No men knew so well how to buy in the cheapest market, 
and how to sell in the dearest. But their gains were not 



* Fitz-Stephen, 5, 6. 

1 Anderson's Hist. Com. 

§ Camden, Brit. i. 254. 

^[ Anderson's Hist. Com. a.d. 1100 



f Annals, 453. 
1130, 1170. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 369 

without drawbacks. On commercial grounds, as well as on book iil 

} Chap. 6. 

religious grounds, they were most unpopular. In the char- 

ters of some towns — as in Newcastle-on-Tyne and Derby 
— it was stipulated that no Jews should be allowed to settle 
or trade in them. Hated by the people, they were wholly 
at the mercy of the crown. The law which extended pro- 
tection to other foreigners, did not extend it to them. The 
king could exact from them at pleasure, could seize their 
persons as well as their property, and deal witli them as 
with slaves. Often were they compelled by torture to 
reveal and surrender their treasures. Even despotism, 
however, has its limits. It is checked by sheer selfishness 
in its tendency to cut the down tree that it may get at the 
fruit.* But the Jews of England, like their fathers in 
Egypt, seemed to multiply and prosper the more they were 
oppressed. Privileges were frequently granted them, but 
large sums were paid in purchase of those privileges, and 
as the price from time to time of their continuance. In 
1290, the Jews were banished from England, and much of 
their property passed to the crown. It should not be con- 
cealed that one cause of the great unpopularity of the Jews 
was the Shylock severity with which they treated their 
debtors.f 

In London, merchants were resident, from nearly all ^X^ 
nations, before the close of this period, among whom the 
Germans and Italians were conspicuous. Nearly all the 
products of the East which reached this distant island of 
the "West, were imported by Italians. One company, or 
guild, of Italian merchants, bore the name of the Caursini. 
Some of these Caursini brought great odium on their guild, 
by acting as collectors of revenue for the court of Rome.:}: 
The Germans were great importers of steel, and had a yard 

* Montesquieu. 

\ The seventh chapter in Madox, intitled ' Of the Exchequer of the Jews,' 
contains much curious information in relation to this people. ' In sum, the 
king seemed to be absolute lord of their estates and effects, and of the persons 
of them, of their wives and children.' — Hist. Excheq. c. vii. p. 150. See also 
Anderson's Hist. Com. a.d. 1100, 1160, 1189, 1190, 1199, 1208. Matt. Paris, 
A.D. 1210, 1239, 1254, 1255. 

\ Anderson's Hist. Com. passim. Matt. Westmin. an. 1233. Matt. Paris, 
an. 1235, 1251. 

Vol. I.— 24 



370 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. or quay near the river for the deposit of their merchandise. 

They were known, in consequence, as the company of the 

Steel-yard.* Other nations had their respective quarters 
near the Thames, where their different commodities were 
lodged. The internal trade of the country was conducted 
mostly by natives, either Saxons or Normans. The foreign 
commerce was left mainly in the hands of foreigners, f 
Regulations The Anglo-Norman kings issued many laws for the pro- 
trade, tection and encouragement of trade. Ship-building and 
seamanship were objects of special patronage. The custom 
of ' wrecking ' appears to have been general and inveterate. 
The first two Henries sent forth stringent regulations on 
this subject, enforced by heavy penalties. Care also was 
taken to revise and regulate the coinage. Privileges were 
granted to many guilds and companies, which, though par- 
taking too much, according to modern ideas, of the nature 
of monopolies, and being too much a matter of sale by the 
crown for its own immediate advantage, were nevertheless 
favourable to enterprise in those times, by furnishing the 
necessary security to the outlay of capital 4 

Such are some of the facts which lie on the surface of 
history touching the industrial life of the English under our 
early Norman kings. But we naturally wish to know 
something more of the past than lies upon the surface. We 
would fain be present in the homestead of the husbandman, 
in the workship of the artisan, by the fireside of the bur- 
gess, amidst the traffic of the market-place, and, above all, 
where there are gatherings of the townsmen for public pur- 
poses, if there were such gatherings. Unfortunately our 
authorities suggest, rather than supply, pictures of this de- 
scription. 

One scene of this nature, revealing the passions which 
influenced the Norman and Saxon, or at least the ruling 
and the ruled populations of London, in the time of Richard 

* Anderson, a.d. 1200. 

f The charter granted to Bristol in 1168, contains some harsh provisions 
against the foreign trader, and shows that the English merchants were begin- 
ning to think themselves strong enough to conduct foreign traffic for them- 
selves. — Anderson, a.d. 1168. 

\ Madox, c. x. Anderson, a.d. 1180. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 371 

I., has been transmitted to us. It is a story which has its B £°*. l Ih 
discrepancies, but its substance can be verified, and it may 
assist us in judging of the manner in which the same social 
tendencies were developing themselves in other cities. 

In 1196 Richard I. was at war with the king of France. Fate f 
To meet the expenses of this war, an extraordinary tax was Fitz-osbert, 
laid on the citizens of London. The authorities of the city Longbeard. 
assembled as usual to deliberate on the mode of rais- 
ing the sum required. Those authorities were mostly for- 
eigners — the richer merchants, as well as the great land- 
holders, being nearly all Normans, or men of Anjouan 
descent. It was for some time a privilege of this class that 
they should be wholly exempt from the tallages laid on the 
cities or towns in which they resided. But after a while the 
crown ceased to recognise this distinction. The king re- 
quired the town or city to raise a certain sum, leaving the 
manner of raising it to be determined by the municipal 
functionaries. But such was the course taken by these 
functionaries, that the public burdens continued to fall 
heavily on the poor, and only lightly on the rich.* 

In London, however, there were some Englishmen who 
had become wealthy and influential. Several of these 
had their place in the corporation. One of their number 
named William Fitz-Osbert, had become very popular as 
the defender of the rights of the poor against the favourit- 
isms of the rich. After the battle of Hastings, many of the 
more sturdy Saxons resolved never to shave their beard 
again. William was one of those who retained that badge 
of nationality. Hence the name, by which he is best known, 
is that of William the Longbeard. He availed himself of 
all legal means, for the protection of the weak, against the 
unjust impositions of the strong. He studied both Norman 
and English law carefully for this purpose. His money, 
and his eloquence — with which he is said to have been 
largely gifted — were freely devoted to this object. 

The mayor and aldermen of London had sometimes 
decided that the tax to be raised should be levied on the 
person, and not on property, the rich and the poor 

* Ailredus Eeivallensis, 691. 



372 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 6. 



Long- 
beard's op- 
position 
to the 
magnates. 



paying the same sum. Longbeard had often protested 
against proceedings of this nature. The humbler and the 
middle class of citizens applauded him for so doing, as the 
friend of the poor, and the upholder of right. The ruling 
party — the ' aldermen ' or ' majores,' as they were called, 
on the other hand, denounced him as a demagogue, as fill- 
ing men's heads with mischievous notions about equality 
and liberty. 

In 1196, the proposal in the municipal council was, as 
heretofore, that the sum required by the king should be 
raised in a manner which placed the great burden of it on 
the shoulders of the poor. Longbeard, though he stood 
nearly alone, resisted this proposal. The majority denounced 
him as a traitor. ' Kot so,' was his reply, ' you rather are 
the traitors, who defraud the exchequer of the king of what 
you owe him, and I will myself sec that the king shall not 
be in ignorance of your doings.'* Longbeard had served 
under Richard as a Crusader. He now crossed the sea, and 
presented himself to the king in his tent, casting himself at 
his feet, and imploring him to give protection to his injured 
subjects. The king promised that the matter should be 
attended to, but soon became too much occupied in other 
ways to remember his pledge. 

In the meanwhile, the enemies of Longbeard in England 
were not inactive. Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, and 
justiciar of the kingdom, stood amazed and indignant at the 
effrontery of the man who had dared to appeal to the king 
against men of the Norman race. In his wrath, he went 
so far as to forbid any commoner passing beyond the walls 
of the capital without permission — the offender to be 
accounted a traitor to the king and kingdom. Some Lon- 
don traders took their usual journey to Stamford fair with- 
out this permission, and were thrown into prison. Great 
was the ferment with which London was filled on this ac- 
count. The citizens formed themselves into associations, 

* Mutt. Paris, 127. From baronial emblem, the hawk on fist, assumed by 
Fitz-Ailwyn, an alderman of London, there seems to be ground for the opinion 
that the aldermen of the metropolis once ranked with barons. — Rolls and 
Record*, Introd. 55 xxiii. This fact helps further to account for the ill-feeling 
evidently subsisting between the ruling class and the citizens. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 373 

numbering, it is said, some 50,000 persons, to uphold the b °°k I 6 IL 

policy of Longbeard. "Weapons of every available kind 

were said to have been collected, wherewith to resist the 
arms, or to demolish the fortified houses, of their enemies, 
should they be assailed. Crowds assembled in public 
places, in markets, and in the open air, to set forth their 
grievances. On these occasions, Longbeard was the great 
orator. His speeches appear to have been at times inten- 
tionally obscure, but his auditory would attach clearer and 
more practical ideas to his expressions than the terms used 
by him seem adapted to convey. 

So serious was this posture of affairs, that it attracted 
the attention of the parliament which assembled at this 
juncture in London. Longbeard was summoned to appear 
before it, which he did, followed by thousands of people, 
who cheered him loudly on his way. The popular feeling 
manifested was deemed so formidable, that the considera- 
tion of the case was adjourned, and the justiciar and the 
' majores ' sought to accomplish their object by intrigue. 
The primate of all England, and other men of high rank, 
condescended to harangue the lower classes of citizens in 
different meetings, reminding them of their danger, and 
endeavouring to soften them by fair words. Deceived by the 
representations made to them, the citizens were induced to 
give hostages for the public peace. This done, the magnates 
became ascendant. 

The hostages were sent to different fortresses at some Fate of 
distance from the city. Measures were then taken to seize 
Longbeard. His steps were watched many days, that he 
might be apprehended if possible when alone — so probable 
was it that resistance would otherwise be made in his 
favour. Two citizens, with the requisite force at their dis- 
posal, undertook this service. At length, they found Long- 
beard abroad, with not more than nine of his friends with 
him. They accosted the party in an easy and familiar man- 
ner, when Geoffrey, one of the two, and an old enemy of 
Longbeard, attempted to seize him, while the other shouted 
to the armed men, who were within call, to advance. Long- 
beard drew the poniard then usually worn in the girdle, 



374 NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book iii. an d -with one blow laid Geoffrey dead. Tlie struggle which 

ensued between the friends of Longbeard and their mailed 

assailants was unequal ; but, by some means, Longbeard 
and his friends gained possession of a church, and closed it 
against their pursuers. The citizens, taken by surprise, dis- 
mayed and trembling for the safety of their hostages, did not 
fly promptly to the rescue. In the meanwhile, the justiciar 
and his adherents assembled in great numbers. Hubert 
was one of those Xorman prelates who were not only pre- 
pared to add the responsibilities of the highest civil author- 
ities to those of the episcopate, but to assume the sword 
and helmet in the open field. Longbeard and his friends, 
despairing of safety in the church, had taken possession of 
the tower, from which it was impossible to dislodge them. 
The archbishop, aware that time was precious, issued orders 
that the whole building should be set on fire. His com- 
mand was obeyed, and Longbeard and his associates, in 
attempting to make their way from amidst the flames and 
smoke, were all taken. 

As they passed, bound, along the street, Longbeard 
received a stab from the weapon of a son of that Geoffrey 
who had fallen a little before by his hand. In this state, 
the captured leader was tied to the tail of a horse, and 
drairircd through the streets to the gate of the Tower. Sen- 
tence was there pronounced upon him, as he lay, by the 
archbishop, as justiciar, and the wounded man was then 
dragged, in the same manner, to the place of execution at 
Tyburn. ' So,' says Matthew Paris, ' perished William 
Longbeard, for endeavouring to uphold the cause of right 
and of the poor. If it be the cause that makes the martyr, 
no man may be more justly described as a martyr than he.' * 
Popular The people, though they had failed him in his hour of 

wardfwm. need, showed all possible signs of affection for his memory. 
The wood on which he suffered was borne away at night, 
separated into innumerable fragments, and preserved as 
hardly less sacred than the wood of the true cross. Even 

* Wendover, a.d. 1196. Matt. Paris, 127. GuiL Newbr. 630-633. Ger- 
vas. Cant. 1591. Hoveden, a.d. 1196. Thierry, bk. xi. 270-285. Rolls and 
Records, edited by Sir Francis Palgrave, Introduction, viii. et seq. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 375 

the earth which the wood had touched was removed as B00K ni 

i . Chap. 6. 

having become sacred, until a hollow was formed in the 

place ; and the crowds which assembled there to meditate 
or pray were such, that archbishop Hubert issued orders that 
they should be dispersed at the point of the sword. Only 
by fixing a constant guard upon the spot could the recur- 
rence of such scenes be prevented. Even miracles were 
said to have been wrought on the spot which the blood of 
the friend of the weak and oppressed had made holy. 

The wrongs of the Londoners were wrongs endured 
more or less elsewhere, and the feeling of the Londoners in 
this instance was the feeling of the bulk of the people in 
other towns and cities. During many coming years, no Saxon 
patriot made a journey to the capital without doing pilgrim- 
age to the spot where Longbeard had died his patriot death. 
Names may change, but principles and passions continue 
the same. We find the germ of the true commonalty, and 
of the true liberties of England, in such instances of resist- 
ance, misguided, faulty, and ill-fated, in many respects, as 
they may have often been. In English history, the civic 
spirit was to become stronger than the feudal ; but to give 
that turn to the balance between these two powers, has 
required a large expenditure of thought, and effort, and self- 
sacrifice, extending through seven centuries.* 

It was thus that the industrial and city life of our ances- 
tors proved favourable to their political power, and not less 
to their general intellectual culture — a phase of the revolu- 
tion of this period that must not be overlooked. 

The half century which preceded the Norman Conquest 
was a space of comparative tranquillity in English history. 

* Longbeard's friends were men whose names bespoke their Saxon origin, 
and his history is an illustration of the antagonism existing, not so much be- 
tween rich and poor, as between Saxon and Norman. Sir Francis Palgrave 
remarks, that amidst the dry technicalities of our court records, it is easy to 
discover particulars which show the condition of society. ' A female, the wife 
of William le Parmenter, of Westminster, is designated in the pleadings as 
Sna-wit, or Snow-white, and also as Swan-hilda. Both these names are evi- 
dently epithets derived from the beauty of her complexion, and equivalent to 
each other. And they also show how purely the common people were still 
Anglo-Saxon in language and mode of thought; for the expressions thus em- 
ployed have all the spirit and the form of the poetry of their remote northern 
ancestors. But with respect to the upper classes, and those immediately con- 
nected with them, we may equally discern the influence of the foreign tongue 
jn other names not less significant.' — Rolls and Records, Introduction, xxxv. 



376 



NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 



B cau>." L -^ * s true > tne ascendency of a Danish dynasty was the as- 

Tntdi^ai cer >dency of a race inferior to the Saxons themselves in cul- 

Engiand tivation. The security, however, which prevailed, was 

t"™V hts favourable to a partial restoration of educational institutions 

in the cathedrals and monasteries ; and the first dawn of 

light which was to follow may, perhaps, be traced to that 

remote period.* 

otilurin ^ lc ^ orman kings were most of them disposed to 

mans eNor ' P atromze learning. The Conqueror himself, when the crisis 

of the new settlement was over, showed some liberality in 

this direction. His son Henry was known, from his decided 

literary tastes, by the name of Beauclerc — the scholar. 

Henry II. was a man of scarcely less culture, and placed his 

sons under the best preceptors the age could furnish. These 

reigns embrace the whole space from 1066 to 1216, with 

the exception of the twenty-two years divided between Ru- 

fus and Stephen. 

The Conqueror founded two famous abbeys — Battle and 
Selby, and many smaller convents, which, in those clays, 
would all be places of education. His son Henry was educat- 
ed in the abbey of Abingdon, under the care of the abbot 
Grrymbold, and of Faricius, a physician, who taught at Ox- 
ford, f The clergy introduced by the Conqueror OM r ed every- 
thing to his favour, and were expected to be subservient to 
his will. But some of them were men of learning, and did 
much to diffuse a taste for literature in their new connec- 
tions. Herman, who became bishop of Salisbury, founded 
an excellent library in his cathedral. Godfrey, prior of St. 
Swithin's in Winchester, was an elegant Latin poet. Her- 
bert de Losinga, a monk of Normandy, who became bishop 
of Thetford in Norfolk, instituted an abbey in Norwich for 
Benedictine monks, and largely endowed it.:}: A learned 
foreigner, named Geoffrey, who had studied in Paris, opened 

* Just before this interval Oswald, archbishop of York, found the monas- 
teries of his province so extremely ignorant, not only in the common elements 
of grammar, but even as to the rules of their orders, that he sent to France for 
teachers to instruct them. With this deterioration of such establishments, of 
course, there had come a general deterioration of mind and manners. — War- 
ton's Introduction of Learning into England, cxl. But from about the close 
of the tenth century, not only England, but Europe, began to give signs of the 
approach of better days. 

f Wood's Hist. 46. \ Warton's Introd. cxliii. 



THE CONQUEST EST ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 377 

a school at Dunstable, which became famous. In short, B00K IIL 

7 " Chap. 6. 

the nobles and prelates so far vied with their kings in the 

encouragement of the religious and literary tendencies of the 
times, that, as before stated, between five and six hundred 
monasteries, all designed to be more or less places of in- 
struction, made their appearance in England in the time 
between the Conquest and the reign of king John.* 

Nor were all the schools of this period clerical schools. Lay schools. 
In London, St. Albans, and other places, laymen began to 
make their appearance as educators. f Some of these pri- 
vate schools were what we should describe as grammar- 
schools. In others the higher departments of science were 
studied. Fitz-Stephen, who wrote in the time of Henry II., 
gives us the following account of the ' holiday ' doings of 
certain schools for youth in London in his time. ' It is 
usual,' he says, ' for these schools to hold public assemblies 
in the churches, in which the scholars engage in demonstra- 
tive or logical disputations, some using enthymems and 
others perfect syllogisms, some aiming at nothing but to 
gain the victory, and make an ostentatious display of their 
acuteness, while others have the investigation, of truth in 
view. Artful sophists on these occasions acquire great ap- 
plause — some by a prodigious inundation and flow of words, 
others by their specious but fallacious arguments. After 
the disputations, other scholars deliver rhetorical declama- 
tions, in which they observe all the rules of art, and neg- 
lect no topic of persuasion. Some of the younger boys in 
the different schools contend against each other in verse, 
about the principles of grammar, and the preterites and 
supines of verbs.';}: 

It is during this period that Oxford and Cambridge The 
acquire an acknowledged place in history as seats of learn- 
ing. In the time of Richard I. the University of Oxford is 

* Tanner, Notitia Monastica, Pref. 

f Matt. Paris, Vit. Abbat. 56-62. Brompton, Chron. 1348. Hoveden, 589. 
Dupin, Eccles. Hist. cent. xiii. Tanner Not. Monast. Pref. The most eminent 
scholars England produced, before and even below the twelfth century, were 
educated in our religious houses. The encouragement given in the English 
monasteries to the transcribing of books was very considerable. — Warton's 
Introd. cxliv. Of this Warton has given a series of proofs. 

\ W. Stephan. Civit. Lond. 4. Henry's Hist. Eng. vi. book iii. c. 4. 



i-,^ iue umver 
sities. 



6ib NORMANS AND ENGLISn. 

B cnfp I 6 L s P°^ en °f as men spoke of the University of Paris. Many 

English students studied in both seminaries. Among the 

eminent Englishmen who studied in Paris were Thomas a 
Becket ; Robert White, a scholar whose name bespeaks his 
Saxon origin, and who lectured with much applause in 
Oxford : Nicholas Breakspear, who became pope under the 
title of Adrian the Fourth ; Robert of Melun, so called from 
his teaching in that city, who became bishop of Hereford ; 
and, above all these, the renowned John of Salisbury.* 

The school in Oxford was of some celebrity before the 
Conquest, possibly from the time of Alfred. In 1109, about 
forty years after the Conquest, we find in that -city a street 
named School -street, and another named Shydiard-Btreeb'f 
— facts which suggest that Oxford must have been conspic- 
uous as a place of education long before. The royal resi- 
dence at Woodstock was favourable to its progress in this 
view, especially in the time of Henry I. It was in the 
middle of the twelfth century that Vicarius lectured on Civil 
Law in Oxford. Medicine was soon afterwards added to 
its course of studies. The fact that three thousand students 
migrated from Oxford in 1209, and the fact that quite that 
nnmber is known to have been resident there not many 
years biter, will suffice to indicate the eminence to which 
the University had then risen. In 1229 a considerable 
migration took place, both of students and teachers, from the 
University of Paris to the University of Oxford.* 

During the greater part of this period, the schools at 
Canterbury, St. Albans, Lincoln, Westminster, Winchester, 
and Peterborough were all nourishing. But Oxford sur- 
passed them, and was especially distinguished from them, 
as being independent in its origin — that is, it was not a 
growth from the cathedral or conventual schools. In the 
schools last named, and from which nearly all the univer- 

* John of Salisbury spent some nine or ten years in Paris ; and, though 
much enamoured at first of the dialectics taught there, he lived to denounce 
them with much bitterness, as leading to nothing better than ingenious trifling. 
— See his Metalogicus. 

+ Wood, Hist. Vicus Schcdiasticoritm. Ruber's History of the English 
Universities, i. 47. 

\ Huber's Hist. i. 52, note 10. It is not till the year 1200 that the school 
in Paris becomes an incorporation and a university. Crevier, Hist, de P Uni- 
•ver. de Paris, i. 255. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 379 

si ties north of the Alps had their origin, the teachers were b °°k m. 

all ecclesiastics, living as such on their stipends. But the 

lay teachers, who began to make their appearance at this 
time, were dependent for support on the fees of their pupils, 
and being free from the control of the clergy, they extended 
the range of their teaching considerably beyond that of the 
clerical preceptors by whom they had themselves been 
educated.* 

Places of residence known by the name of Inns and 
Halls, existed in Oxford from the time of the Conqueror. 
These consisted mostly of hired buildings of a rude descrip- 
tion. The first establishment entitled to the name of a col- 
lege, as a foundation, perpetuated and privileged by law, 
does not date earlier than 1264. But within little 
more than a century from that time, the greater part of the 
colleges in Oxford now known to us were founded. The 
inns and halls were simply voluntary schools. Colleges 
possessed endowments, a common residence, and a common 
table, at least to some extent, and the power, for the most 
part, of self goveriiment.f 

In Cambridge, the most ancient college was founded in 
1256, or, as some say, in 1274. The following account of 
the early days of Cambridge is given by Peter of Blois, 
about a century after the times to which it relates. The 
mention of Averroes in this description is an error — that 
philosopher flourished during the latter half of the twelfth 
century. But the substance of the description, though 
somewhat suspicious in its colouring, may, we think, be 
accepted as trustworthy. 

' Joffrid, abbot of Croyland, sent to his manor of Cotten- 
ham, near Cambridge, Master Gislebert, his fellow-monk 

* Huber's Hist. i. Introductory chapter and notes. 'Towards the close 
of the tenth century an event took place which gave a new and a very fortu- 
nate turn to the state of letters in France and Italy. A little before that time 
there were no schools in Europe but those which belonged to the monasteries 
or the episcopal churches. But at the commencement of the eleventh century, 
many persons of the laity, as well as of the clergy, undertook in the most cap- 
ital cities of France and Italy this important charge.' — Warton's Introduct. cxli. 
This lay teaching came in with the Normans, but not immediately; and as the 
universities rose, the monasteries fell, as places of education, and deteriorated 
considerably in all respects. 

f Huber's Hist. i. 



380 NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B ch5 I 6 L an( ^ P r °f essor °f theology, with three other monks, who had 

followed him into England ; who being very well instructed 

in philosophical theorems and other primitive sciences, went 
every day to Cambridge, and having hired a certain public 
barn, taught the sciences openly, and in a little time col- 
lected a great concourse of scholars ; for in the very second 
year after their arrival the number of their scholars from 
the town and country increased so much that there was no 
house, barn, nor church capable of containing them. For 
this reason they separated into different parts of the town, 
and, imitating the plan of the Studium of Orleans ; brother 
Odo, who was eminent as a grammarian and satirical poet, 
read grammar according to the doctrine of Priscian and of 
his commentator Remigius, to the boys and younger stu- 
dents that were assigned to him, early in the morning. At 
one o'clock brother Terricus, a most acute sophist, read the 
Logic of Aristotle, according to the Introduction and Com- 
mentaries of Porphyry and Averroes, to those who were 
further advanced. At three, brother William read lectures 
on Tully's Rhetoric and Quintilian's Institutes. But 
Master Gislebert, being ignorant of the English, but very 
expert in the Latin and French languages, preached in the 
several churches to the people on Sundays and holidays.' * 
"With this picture of Cambridge in its early days, we 
may connect another relating to Oxford in the time of Rich- 
ard I. Giraldus Cambrensis lived at that time ; and such 
was his passion for study, that he is said to have refused 
three bishoprics, to have spent twenty years in the Univer- 
sity of Paris, and seven years in seclusion in England, that 
he might give himself effectually to such pursuits. His 
works were many, and on many subjects. Among them 
was a Topography of Ireland. This book the author is 
said to have recited on three successive days at Oxford. 
The first day to the poor of the city ; the second to the doc- 
tors and scholars of good standing ; the third to the body of 
the students, the citizens, and the soldiers of the garrison. It 
would be pleasant to call up to the imagination the scenes of 
those three days — to look on the zealous Giraldus, enamoured 

* Continuation of Ingulf '. Henry's Eng. bk. iii. c. 4. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS KELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 381 

of his theme, as he endeavours to lead the professors and stu- B J? 0K iil 

7 x Chap. 5. 

dents, citizens, soldiers, and working men, upon a travel 

through the sister island. It is probable that these recita- 
tions took place at a time when Giraldus and others passed 
to some degree — the season, when, in Oxford, as in other 
universities, the visitors who nocked to the town to share 
in its ceremonials and sight-seeing, its hospitalities and 
merriment, were such as often to exceed all the ordinary 
means of accommodation. So did the awakening of intellec- 
tual life in those tfges bring other signs of life along with it.* 

The East, as the passage touching the early days of influence of 
Cambridge indicates, was now contributing its treasures to ture. 
the "West. The Moslems of Spain were in possession of all 
the Greek literature and science that had survived the fall 
of the Roman empire. The light diffused from their many 
noble libraries, and their many seats of learning, had placed 
them far in advance of the Christian states of Europe. But 
the time had come in which the nations of the West were 
to share largely in those treasures. The most valuable 
Greek authors were translated into Latin, and passed, with 
profuse Latin commentaries, over the whole of Christendom.f 
By Moslem and by Christian, however, it was not so much 
the literature as the science of the ancient world that was 
especially prized. Mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and 
medicine, together with metaphysics, logic, and rhetoric — 
these were the favourite studies. The study of the Roman 
and Canon law was of course peculiar to the Christian 
states. 

With these tendencies came the ascendency of Aristotle, Aristotle 
the reign of the scholastic philosophy, and of the men known schooimeu. 
in history by the name of schoolmen. Alcuin, Erigena, Lan- 
franc, and Anselm, were all, in fact, schoolmen, long before 
scholasticism became known by that name ; and by their 
tastes, the taste of their times was materially influenced. 
The early fathers professed to base their theology on the 
Scriptures. Later writers made these fathers themselves 
their authority. The schoolmen endeavoured to sustain the 

* Wood, Hist. Antiq. Oxon. 25. Warton's Introdud. clviii. 
\ Warton's Introdud. cxli. 



382 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B chap I 6 L orthodoxy of the church, and intelligence in general, by the 

aid of the rules and method of the Aristotelian dialectics. 

But Peter Lombard, the reputed founder of the scholastic 
philosophy, does not publish his famous Book of Sentences 
before the middle of the twelfth century ; and it was left to 
the ' Master of the Sentences,' as he was called, to impart 
to the wider range of study which aimed at something much 
higher than the routine of the conventual schools, the system 
which was to charcterize it for centuries to come. The logic 
of Aristotle was the instrument used in %11 investigations. 
Everything to be admitted as knowledge, must bear to be 
tested by that method of proof. Physics and metaphysics 
fell alike under the same scrutiny, and theology became a 
science.* 

The time came when this philosophy proved a grand 
hindrance to knowledge, conclusions so established being 
deemed irrefragable. Such, however, they were not, for the 
reasoning in relation to them ofton rested on doubtful pre- 
mises, and was in consequence itself doubtful. In its 
attempts to explain abstract ideas, and to give distinctness 
to them, this philosophy was favourable to many subtle and 
acute forms of thought ; but it gave rise, at the same time, to 
much trifling, and taught men to make light of particular and 
available knowledge, in their eager pursuit of unwarranted 
generalizations and useless refinements. Of course, even such 
a movement was better than the preceding torpor and stagna- 
tion. It was the sign of life, and contributed to other ends 
than those contemplated by the minds with which it origin- 
ated. Xow, accordingly, began those subtle disputations 
between Nominalists and Realists in England, which were 
to attract the attention and test the orthodoxy of kings and 
councils in France. Robert of Melun, bishop of Hereford, 
had distinguished himself as an opponent of the Nominalists 
in the University of Paris. 
Angio-xor- Now, also, that series of Latin historians and annalists 
ri^k hlst °* make their appearance, the bare enumeration of whose 
works is enough to suggest the extent of literary activity 

* So successful was this study in Oxford, that ' before the reign of Edward 
II. no foreign university could boast so conspicuous a catalogue of subtle and 
invincible doctors.' — Warton, Introduct. clxxv. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 383 

that must have been awakened.* Of course, this great in- B ° 0K iil 

Chap. 6. 

crease of writers implies a proportionate increase of readers. 

Classical learning, indeed, was not much cultivated, and 
was confined generally to a partial acquaintance with Latin 
authors. There were scholars who knew a little of Hebrew, 
and of Arabic, chiefly by the aid of Jewish teachers, but it 
is one of the extraordinary things reported of Abelarcl, that, 
to his other learning, he added some knowledge of Greek. 
Mathematics, too, according to John of Salisbury and Peter 
of Blois, were but little studied, and chiefly from their sup- 
posed relation to astrology. We are inclined to think, how- 
ever, that the architects of this period must have known 
much more of mathematics than was suspected by these 
authorities, f 

In 1151 Gratian, a monk of Bologna, published his study of the 
Decretum of the Canon Law. This scientific digest super- canon law. 
seded all other works of the kind, and became the uni- 
versal text-book among teachers. At this time also, the 
Pandects of Justinian are brought from their obscurity, 
and become in like manner the great class-book in the study 
of civil law. In the first half of the twelfth century, Roger, 
a monk. of Normandy, lectured with much applause on the 
canon and civil law in Oxford ; and during this century 
Geirard, an Englishman, lectured with still greater favour 

* Such as William of Poitiers, Ordericus Vitalis, William of Jumieges, 
Florence of Worcester, Matthew of Westminster, William of Malmesbury, 
Eadmer, Turgot, and Simeon of Durham, John of Hexham, Richard of Hex- 
ham, Wallingford, Ailred, Alfred of Beverly, Giraldus Cambrensis, Roger of 
Hoveden (Howden), William of Newburgh, Benedictus Abbas, Ralph de Diceto, 
Gervase of Canterbury, Vinesauf, Richard of Devizes, and Jocelin de Brake- 
londa. Many of these writers, as stated elsewhere, copy from their predeces- 
sors so largely as often to become not a little wearisome as we pass from one 
to the other. But most of them describe events of their own time, and they 
often follow authorities now lost. The reader who wishes further information 
concerning these historians and chroniclers will find it in Nicholson's Historical 
Library ; Warton's Introduction of Learning into England, preliminary to his 
History of English Poetry ; in the literary Introduction to Lappenberg's His- 
tory of England; in Wright's Biographia Britannica ; and in the republication 
of these various works which have taken place of later years, both in Latin and 
English. 

\ The Latin style of John of Salisbury is highly praised even by modern 
critics. ' His Policraticon,' says Warton, ' is an extremely pleasant miscellany, 
replete with erudition, and a judgment of men and things which properly be- 
longs to a more sensible and reflecting period. His familiar acquaintance with 
the classics appears, not only from the happy facility of his language, but from 
the many citations from the purest Roman authors.' — Introduct. 



;s4 



NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 



BOOK III. 
Chap. 6. 



The Latin 
language — 

multiplica- 
tion of 
books. 



on the same subjects in Paris. The pope granted Geirard 
a dispensation, which empowerd him to hold his professor- 
ship in France, together with the see of Lichfield in Eng- 
land. The admirers of the common, that is, of native law, 
both in this country and on the Continent, opposed these 
studies with much vehemence. But their patriotism was 
resisted by the professional zeal of the clergy. The civil 
law aided the canon law, and the canon law was the basis of 
church discipline and church power.* From a letter of 
Peter of Blois, we may see the ardour with which these 
branches of knowledge were pursued at this time. ' In 
the house of my master (Theobald), the archbishop of Can- 
terbuiy, there are several very learned men, famous for 
their knowledge of law and politics, who spend their time 
between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and 
debating causes. To us, all the knotty questions of the 
kingdom are referred, which are produced in the common 
hall, and every one in his order, having first prepared him- 
self, declares, with all the eloquence and acuteness of which 
he is capable, but without wrangling, what is wisest and 
safest to be done. If God suggests the soundest opinion 
to the youngest among us, we all agree to it without envy 
or detraction.' f 

These Romanized tastes contributed towards making the 
Latin a commonly spoken language. Among the clergy, 
and all who attended the different schools, whether in the 
universities, the cathedrals, or the monasteries, Latin was the 
common medium of communication. Professors lectured in 
it with the greatest ease and freedom, and youths in very 
humble life might sometimes be heard conversing in it. 
Books, too, were multiplied by transcription, with a facility 
exceeding our conception. The practice, and the necessity 
of the art, gave men a great mastery in it. Then, as now, 



* See p. 315 of this volume. That two of the most distinguished profes- 
sors in this country before the age of the Great Charter — Geirard and White 
— should have been Englishmen, shows the vigour with which the Saxon mind 
was then forcing its way upward. 

\ Henry, Hist. Eng. vi. Warton reckons the profession of the civil and 
canonical laws among the impediments ' to the propagation of those letters 
which humanize the mind, and cultivate the manners.' — Introduct. clxxv. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 385 

though not of course to the same extent, books which were B q%^, 6 IL 
interesting were widely circulated. 

Among the works of interest so circulated, we do not y t ° e ™Xre. 
of course reckon the huge tomes of history or chronicle to 
which some twenty authors of this period gave existence. 
~Nor can we suppose that the Latin poetry, produced by an 
equal number of writers, was more than partially read, 
though often characterized by much graceful elaboration. 
It is the romance literature of this age, written in Latin or 
in Anglo-Norman, in prose and verse, that we find most 
frequently under the hand of the transcriber. 

Certain rude minstrels called 'jongleurs,' accompanied J^ 011 " 
the Normans into England. One of these, named Taillefer, 
a chief of his class, struck the first blow, in the spirit of his 
own war-song, at Hastings. Rahere, the founder of Bar- 
tholomew's Hospital, appears to have been a man of this 
order. His songs and feats made him a welcome guest in 
the castle and the palace, and won applause from the hum- 
blest, as well as from those of high degree.* 

But with the opening of the twelfth century the ' jon- TheTrou- 
gleur ' gives place to the ' trouvere.' The honour of the first 
place, in point of time, in this new class of songsters, is as- 
signed to William, duke of Guienne, whose name belongs to 
the close of the eleventh century. Some fifty years, how- 
ever, pass, before we meet with a second name attaining to 
any such distinction. But through nearly a century and a 

* ' The following,' says Ellis, 'may perhaps be accepted as a tolerable sum- 
mary of the history of the minstrels. It appears likely that they were carried 
by Rollo into France, where they probably introduced a certain number of 
their native traditions ; those, for instance, relating to Orgier le Danios, and 
other northern heroes, who were afterwards enlisted into the tales of chivalry ; 
but that, being deprived of the mythology of their original religion, and cramped, 
perhaps, as well by the sober spirit of Christianity, as by the imperfection of a 
language whose tameness was utterly inapplicable to the sublime obscurity of 
their native poetry, they were obliged to adopt various modes of amusing, and 
to unite the talents of the mimic and the juggler, as a compensation for the 
defects of the musician and poet. Their musical skill, however, if we may 
judge from the number of their instruments, of which very formidable cata- 
logues are to be found in every description of a royal festival, may not have 
been contemptible ; and their poetry, even though confined to short composi- 
tions, was not likely to be devoid of interest to their hearers, while employed 
on the topics of flattery or satire. Their rewards were certainly in some cases 
enormous, and prove the esteem in which they were held.' — English Metrical 
Romances, Introduct. § I. The Minnesingers were the troubadours of Ger- 
many : they flourished during the same period, and were not less numerous. 

Vol. I.— 25 



BOOK 
Chap, 



386 - NOEMAUfl AND ENGLISH. 

n*- half from that time the names of such aspirants become 



numberless. The trouvere, or troubadour artist, was of a 
higher grade than the 'jongleur.' His name bespoke him 
a seeker and a knowcr, and his narratives were to give 
proof of his pretensions. In fact, the ' trouvere ' was a 
scholarly person. For the most part these men were 
ordained clergymen. But they bore the name of 'clercs 
lisant,' a designation which denoted, that with the status of 
the clerk, they aspired to be the men of letters of their time. 
They were not bound to the routine of the convent, nor to 
the duties of the parish priest. They ranged freely from 
castle to castle, and tendered acceptable service as min- 
strels, as scholars, and as men to whom the training of 
noble youth might be entrusted. They were familiar with 
the treasures locked up in the Latin tongue, and could give 
forth the lore of other lands, and other days, to knight and 
lady, in the tongue spoken by them. While the chronicler 
in hie convent is full in his account of the doings of king or 
noble in relation to the church, and, above all, in relation 
to the possessions or privileges of ' our abbey '—the trcuvtre 
dwells with alike interest, but with much more spirit and life, 
on events and scenes with which the gay and secular world 
are interested. The men who do battle, their costume, their 
weapons, their achievements, their love affairs — all arc da- 
guerroetyped. So is it with the pageant on the coronation- 
day, the wedding-day, or at the grand tournament. There 
was a large public in those times, as in our own, who wished 
to know all about such scenes, and the trouvhi; was in the 
place of many a modern contrivance for meeting this de- 
mand. Crowds who did not read novels, listened to them 
from his lips. He knew better than other men what had 
been done, or was doing, and could report it better. Eloise, 
in one of her extant letters, speaks of verses written in am- 
orous measure by Abelard, which were so sweet in their 
language and melody, that his name, and the name of his 
Eloise, were in the mouths of all classes, even of the most 
illiterate, 
nistoricai Kor was it the living world onlv that the trouvhe was 

Romances. .. , _ . ' , - _ - _ .. 

expected to present, so that the picture should seem to live 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 387 

anew for those to whom it was presented. The same poetic B00K iil 

and romantic treatment of the past was expected from him. 

And in the palmy days of the Anglo-Norman trouvere, he 
did not disappoint this expectation. History and fiction 
were alike in his domain, and often the one was mingled 
strangely with the other. Sad blunders does he sometimes 
make in matters of geography and chronology, his ancients 
of a thousand years before, being often singularly like the 
men and women of his own time, in ideas, language, and 
all things. But, with all its faults, this trouvere literature 
was most refreshing and wholesome in its influence on the 
people for whom it was provided. Even the stories about 
fountains guarded by dragons, woods filled with enchant- 
ments, fair ladies subject to base durance and much wrong, 
and gallant knights prepared to brave all clangers for their 
rescue — even these come as an awakening influence on the 
slumbering imagination and feeling of multitudes. 

The effect of the patronage of literature by Henry I. and 
his queens survived through the disorders of the reign of 
Stephen.* But it is not until the reign of Henry II. that 
we become sensible to the influence of the writings of the 
troitvlres on the national taste. 

In our days, we rarely hear the British History of Geoffrey of 
Geoffrey of Monmouth adverted to, except in terms of cen- Monmouth - 
sure and contempt. ' Lying Geoffrey ' is the name some- 
times bestowed upon him. And truly, as a history of Brit- 
ain, his book has small value. But as a species of his- 
torical novel, such as the genius of the twelfth century could 
produce, and the people of the twelfth century could in- 
tensely admire, the book has an interest and a worth of no 
ordinary kind. Within five years from its appearance, it 

* Henry's first wife was the good queen Maude, daughter of Malcolm, king 
of Scotland, by his Saxon queen Margaret. It is in the following somewhat 
querulous terms that Malmesbury refers to Maude's patronage of the kind of 
literature under consideration : — ' She had a singular pleasure in hearing the 
service of God ; and on this account was thoughtlessly prodigal towards clerks 
of melodious voices, addressed them kindly, gave them liberally, promised 
them still more abundantly. Her generosity becoming universally known, 
crowds of scholars, equally famed for verse and for singing, came over; and 
happy did he account himself who could soothe the ears of the queen by the 
novelty of his song.' — Lib. x. Malmesbury attributes this disposition in the 
queen to a love of admiration, but is obliged to admit that Maude was a wo- 
man of fervent piety. 



3S8 N0R31ANS AND ENGLISH. 

B cn£ " L ^ ac ^ keen so rea ^ anc * ta ^ked about, that the young scholar 

who had not become familiar with it, was in much the same 

condition with the youth among ourselves who should be 
obliged to confess that he had never read Bunyan's Pil- 
grim } s Progress or Pobhison Crusoe. By purchase, or by 
loan, the book found its way almost everywhere ; and those 
who could not read it, might be seen crowding together to 
listen to some one who could recite its most touching epi- 
sodes from memory. The book may not be true to history, 
but it must have been wonderfully true to nature. For 
this reason did the popular mind dwell upon it, and the poets 
of later time have gone to it as to a storehouse of the bright 
and beautiful. ' Who indeed ever marshalled a goodlier 
company, all instinct with poetic life. Empire-founding 
Brutus ; Sabrina, stream-engulphed ; Cordelia, whose stead- 
fast filial piety shines out amidst the tempest-stricken scenes 
of Lear's sad history, like the calm bright star on the vexed 
ocean; and Artegal and Elidurus, that tale of devoted 
brotherly love ; Ferres and Porrex, that tale of Cain-like 
hate; and king Lud, and his triumphant burial-place; and 
Merlin and his marvels ; and king Arthur — he upon whose 
shrine Pulci, Boyardo, Ariosto, Chaucer, Sackville, Spenser, 
Drayton, have heaped laurels — Arthur, that great exemplar 
of chivalry, whom Milton himself once thought to make 
the hero of some poem which the world should not wil- 
lingly let die.' * 

Geoffrey is supposed to have been a Benedictine monk, 
belonging to a monastery of that order in Monmouth. His 
book appears to have been published in 1147. Five years 
later he became bishop of St. Asaph. He died in 1154. 
His great patron was Robert, earl of Gloucester, a natural 
son of Henry I. He had the reputation of being well ac- 
quainted with the Breton language ; and his friend Cale- 
nius, archdeacon of Oxford, is said to have brought a num- 
ber of manuscripts in that language into this country, relat- 
ing to ancient British history, which he requested Geoffrey 
to translate. From this source, together with the Welsh 
annals and traditions accessible to him, Geoffrey has been 

* British Quarterly Review, vol. v. p. 167. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LITE. 389 

supposed to have drawn his materials. But it must be ^h^" 1 

remembered, that we have no trace of anything like a me- 

trical romance in the French language before the middle of 
the twelfth century at the earliest.* The popular ballad, 
and the war-song, existed, as they had existed in the north 
long before, but nothing more considerable. While among 
the Bretons, even the tradition of such a literature is not to 
be found. The oldest writing of any description in that 
language does not go farther back than the year 1450.f 
If the manuscripts of the archdeacon of Oxford came from 
Brittany, they must have travelled thither from Wales. 
In fact, as stated elsewhere, the substance of Geoffrey's Brit- 
ish History is to be found in the Welsh Chronicle by Ty- 
silio4 Geoffrey indeed has expanded the fictions of his 
author, and made considerable additions to them ; but the 
source from which his genius derived its inspiration is 
sufficiently manifest. In the British History of Geoffrey 
of Monmouth, we have the fruit, not of the Breton, but of 
the ancient British mind, in the department of historical 
romance. Through many generations, Geoffrey's narrative 
was received in England, with slight exception, as genuine 
history. It was first written in Latin, but was speedily 
translated into Norman, English, and Welsh. Copies were 
multiplied in great numbers, and the work was embellished 
anew, in whole or in part, by many writers, in prose and in 
verse. It thus became the basis of a popular historical liter- 
ature — in the hands of Shakespeare, of a dramatic literature, 
the fame of which must live as long as the name of the 
great bard himself shall live. 

The writer who contributed most to make the contents 
of the British History familiar to the English was Richard 
Wace, a native of the island of Jersey, who threw the sub- 
stance of it into verse in Norman French, adding to it con- 
siderably from sources or inventions of his own. Wace 
presented his book, when complete, to Eleanor, queen of 
Henry II. Wace also wrote a chronicle of the dukes of 

* Ellis's Early Metrical Romances, Introd. 

f Hallam's Introduction to the Literary History of Europe. 



390 NOKMANS AND ENGLISH. 

B ch^6 IL ^ orman( iy, in Alexandrine metre, intitled The Romance of 

Hollo. Among the names most distinguished in this field 

of literature are those of Gaimer, Herman, David Bonoit, 
Luc de la Barre, Hugh of Rutland, Simon du Fresne, Luc 
du Gast, Walter Mapes, Robert de Borrow, Elie de Borrow, 
Rusteian de Pise, Gervias, and Boson. To these names 
some add those of archbishop Langton and Richard I. 
Some works of this class, which were much read and admir- 
ed, were of unknown, or doubtful authorship, as the PU- 
(/rhnage of St. Brandan, the Holy Graal, sometimes called 
the Roman de Perceval, and the separate romances con- 
cerning Prince Arthur and Sir Tristem.* 

chu^ctur"" But if tne Normans knew nothing of a literature of this 
kind until long after their settlement in England, it should 
be acknowledged, as we have before said, that their skill in 
architecture, even before the Conquest, was considerable. 
Admiration of such works was a passion with them. Before 
the close of the tenth century they had adorned their coun- 
try with many beautiful edifices in that bold, masculine 
Romanesque style which they had adopted. When Wil- 
liam meditated the conquest of England, the dukes of Nor- 
mandy, and the nobles who did them homage, had learnt to 
vie with each other in their zeal to cover their respective 
territories with such monuments of their opulence and taste. 
Castles, city fortifications, churches, monasteries, everywhere 
bespoke the interest of the race in snch works. The effect 
of taste in this form soon became even more conspicuous in 
England than it had been in Normandy. Norman archi- 
tecture occupies a middle ground between the Roman and 
the Gothic. It embraces much of the solidity and gravity 

* It is not necessary we should attempt to settle any of the questions 
which have been raised concerning the men or the performances above men- 
tioned. The reader desirous of becoming fully acquainted with this subject 
may consult the following works: Walton's History of English Poetry ; De la 
Rue, Essais Historiques ; Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, edited by Hearne ; 
Percy's Relics of Ancient Poetry ; The Metrical Romances of Ellis, Ritson, and 
Weber; Havelok the Dane, edited by Sir Francis Madden (Roxburgh Club); 
History of English Rhymes, by Edwin Guest; Reliquia Antigua, by Wright 
and Halliday ; Early Metrical Romances (Camden Society) ; Layamon's Brut, 
or Chronicle of Britain, edited by Sir F. Madden; Sir Tristan, edited by Sir 
Walter Scott ; Wright's Biographia. In his ' Anglo-Norman Feriod ' Mr. 
Wright has given some account of above two hundred persons known more or 
less as authors. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS EELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 391 

of the former style, with something of the lightness and book in. 

" ' ° ° Chap. 6. 

flexibility of the latter. It retains the arch, but uses that 

element, and every other, with a licence of its own. Noth- 
ing can be more picturesque than some of the domestic 
examples in this style of building. 

So did the powerful and the wealthy become the patrons Retrospect. 
of literature and art in Anglo-Norman Britain. In the 
absence of higher motives, the desire of fame, and a passion 
for such splendour as was possible in those times, were 
sufficient to prompt many to this policy. The result we see 
in the increase of learned men ; in the multiplication and im- 
provement of institutions in aid of learning ; in the number 
of authors who distinguish themselves as chroniclers, histo- 
rians, poets, and romance writers ; and in the consequent 
wider diffusion of a taste for literature and refinement. 

The languages spoken in England at this time were the 
Latin, the French, and the English. All laymen were not 
ignorant of Latin ; but even nobles continued to regard such 
ignorance as little if at all discreditable to them. The lan- 
guage spoken by the Normans was French ; but towards 
the close of this period the Norman-French had borrowed 
much from the Saxon, and the Saxon in turn had borrowed 
something from the Norman. It has been said that the 
Conqueror meditated extinguishing the language of the 
people he had subdued. But the statement is unwarranted. 
"William endeavoured to learn the English language. All 
his charters were given in that tongue. His successors fol- 
lowed his example in this respect ; and when the English 
did give place to another language, it was to the Latin, and 
not to the French. French, indeed, was the language of the 
courts of law, and this must have been a great disadvan- 
tage to the English ; but the usage was a necessity — the 
administrators of the law could speak in no other tongue. 
But in the reign of king John, the English was gaining fast 
everywhere upon the French, and the silent action of time 
was about to show, in this manner, the great preponderance, 
in number and influence, still possessed by the Saxon race 
in England. 

By the Conquest, our island almost ceased to be insular. 



392 NORMANS AND ENGLISH. 

book in. England became a consolidated power, participating in all 
— - the questions and interests affecting the nations of Europe. 
In the great controversy, for example, between the ecclesi- 
astical and the civil power, England has its full share. All 
the subtle pleas on which such controversies were founded 
became familiar to men's thoughts in this country. Ecclesi- 
astical disputes, military affairs in Normandy, the com- 
mencement of the Crusades, the fame of our Richard I. in 
those enterprises, the new laws, and the new features in the 
administration of law — all may be said to have been both the 
effects and the causes of a new wakefulness, disposing men 
to observe, to reflect, and judge in regard to what was pass- 
ing about them. The five hundred monasteries had their 
schools, but the five hundred towns and cities were all 
schools ; and in these last, the lessons taught, though little 
marked or perceived, were ceaseless, manifold, and potent. 
By degrees, Norman and Saxon became more equal. Mar- 
riages between the two races became every-day events. In 
the t'aci' of the law and of the magistrate, the two races may 
be said by this time to be two races no longer. If the Saxon 
burgess, and the Norman alderman, still looked at times 
with jealousy upon each other, the fight between them 
became comparatively fair and harmless, as it became less a 
battle of the strong against the weak. When the corpse of 
king John was laid in Worcester cathedral, the dark day in 
the history of the English had passed. In future, the Nor- 
man, whether prince or baron, must demean himself honour- 
ably towards the Englishman, or cease to be powerful. 
The revolution of this period to the Saxon, had consisted in 
his being defeated, despoiled, downtrodden — and in his recov- 
ering himself from that position, by his own patient energy, 
so as to regain from the new race of kings all the liberty 
he had lost, and guarantees for that liberty which were 
full of the seeds of a greater liberty to come. With 
this revolution to the Saxon, there came revolution to 
the Norman. The Norman is no longer a man of military 
science, and nothing more — no longer a mere patron of let- 
ters, with scarcely a tincture of them himself. His intelli- 
gence is enlarged. His tastes are expanded and refined. 



THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. 393 

The country of his adoption is becoming more an object of b £ok iil 

affection to him than the country from which he has derived 

his name. In short, the Norman is about to disappear in 
the Englishman. The Englishman is not about to disap- 
pear in the Norman. After all, the oldest dwellers upon 
the soil have proved to be the strongest.* 

* The following passage indicates the admixture of races that had taken 
place in about a century and a half from the Conquest : — 

' D. Nunquid pro murdro debet imputari clandestina mors Anglici sicut 
Normanni. 

' M. A prima institutione non debet, sicut audisti : sed jam cohabitantibus 9 

Anglicis et Normannis, ct alterutrum uxores ducentibus, vel nubentibus, sic 
permixta? sunt nationes, ut vix discerni possit hodie, de liberis loquor, quis 
Anglicus quis Normannus sit genere ; exceptis duntaxat ascriptitiis qui Villani 
dicuntur, quibus non est liberum obstantibus dominis suis a sui status conditi- 
one disccdere. Ea propter pcne quicunque sic hodie occfsus reperitur, ut mur- 
drum punitur exceptis his quibus certa sunt ut diximus servilis conditionis in- 
dicia.' — Dialogus de Scaccario, lib. i. Madox, Hist. Excheq. 26. 



BOOK IV. 

ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



CHAPTER I. 

INFLUENCE OF THE WAES OF ENGLAND ON THE 
ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 

book iv. ^FIIE reign of John closed in 1216. His son and suc- 
Ch * j ' 1, A cessor, J [enry III., was then only ten years of age. Tlie 

iiewym. ' ascendency of the barons at the time of signing the Great 
Charter, had so far declined subsequently, that they had 
invited prince Louis of France, with a French army, to their 
assistance. This army was in England when John died. 
But the carl of Pembroke, who became protector to the 
young king, succeeded in reconciling many of the discon- 
tented chiefs, and in compelling the prince and his followers 
to withdraw from the kingdom. Unhappily the wise 
administration of Pembroke was of short duration. He 
died in 1210. 

Henry's Henry made several attempts to recover the possessions 

of the English crown in France. The first was in 1224, and 
was partially successful.* The second, in 1229, was more 
considerable, and was conducted by the king in person, but 
ended in failure and disgrace, f Not less signal was the 

* Rvmer, i. 277-295. Matt. Paris, 223. 
f Annal. Waverl. 192. Matt. Paris, 243-252. 



wars. 



INFLUENCE OF WAE ON ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 395 

disgrace which attended an expedition into that country in B ^^ I 1 v - 

1242, in which Henry was weak enough to attempt to sus- 

tain the earl of Marche, who had married the queen mother, 
Isabella, in refusing homage to the king of France for lands 
held frrom him in Poictou.* An expedition into Gascony 
in 125-1 had a somewhat better termination. It sufficed to 
put an end to the attempts of the king of Castile to assume 
the sovereignty over that province, f But the hold of the 
English crown on those territories was slight, and the Nor- 
mans in England at this time had ceased to feel any deep 
interest in the connexion which the court strove to perpet- 
uate between the two countries. 

Nothing is more observable during this reign than the character of 

° ° ° his reign. 

complaints made against favouritism, and against favouritism 
as bestowed upon foreigners. This weakness in the king, 
together with his habitual insincerity and his want of cour- 
age, economy, and self-government, exposed him to much 
humiliation and suffering. His reign extended to more 
than half a century, and it is filled with civil war, or with 
the intrigues of faction. It was natural that the royal au- 
thority should decline during this period. The doctrine of 
resistance became familiar to the minds of all men. It is 
in these circumstances that our first House of Commons 
makes its appearance. The vices of our kings have often 
proved favourable to the liberties of the people. 

Edward, who succeeded his father, had given proofs of ^dwardi 01 
capacity and courage during the troubles which marked the 
close of the last reign. It was soon felt that the sceptre had 
passed from the hand of the weak to the hand of the strong. 
During the first twenty years of his sway, England and 
France were at peace. In 1286 Edward did homage in 
Paris to Philip the Fair for certain lands held by him under 
the crown of France. But in 1293 the peace between the 
two countries was disturbed. 

Some English and French sailors came to words and blows Naval vic- 
about access to a spring ot iresh water near Bayonne, and one English. 
of the Frenchmen was killed. The matter was soon noised 

* M. West. 306. M. Paris, 392, et seq. Chron. Dunst. 153. 
f Kymer, i. 505. M. West. 256. M. Paris, 531. 



396 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



BOOK IV. 
Chap. 1. 



Perfidy of 
Philip tlio 
Fair. 



abroad. The national feeling, so easily excited between 
French and English in later times, began to manifest itself 
bitterly on both sides. The narrow seas were suddenly 
covered with petty instances of maritime hostility. Very 
soon the Normans sent out a fleet of two hundred armed 
vessels to chastise the islanders. This armament sailed 
southward, seizing all English vessels that came in its way ; 
and not content with appropriating ships and cargo, they 
hung the crews. The inhabitants of the Cinque Ports were 
soon apprised of these proceedings, and fifty strong-built 
vessels were immediately manned, and sent to intercept the 
enemy on his return. The two fleets met ; the Normans, 
after an obstinate resistance, were completely defeated ; and 
as no quarter was given, the destruction was enormous. 
Fifteen thousand Normans are said to have perished.* The 
Normans of Normandy and the Normans of England were 
not likely to be brought nearer together by the fortunes of 
that day. Nor were the sons of the old Saxon and Danish 
sea-kings likely to feel abashed in the presence of their 
Nornmn neighbours when they had a few such days to look 
back upon. It seems probable that this mixed race of 
islanders will soon become one, like the sea which encircles 
them, and which promises to be a grand element in their 
destiny. 

Edward was fully occupied at tins time with his war in 
Scotland, and not in a condition to meet the haughty re- 
monstrance of the king of France as his temper might have 
prompted. Philip summoned him to appear before him in 
Paris, to answer, as duke of Guienne, for the wrong said to 
have been perpetrated by his subjects on the subjects of his 
superior. At the same time, the French king entered into 
a treaty with the king of Scotland, that so Edward, if not 
submissive to the call made upon him, might have a war 
upon his hands in both countries.f 

Edward despatched his brother Edmund, earl of Lan- 
caster, to treat of this matter in Paris. But Philip was inex- 
orable. Nothing short of the presence of the duke in per- 

* Ileming. i. 39 et seq Walsingham, 58 et scq. 

f Trivet. Annul, an. 1294. Walsingham, 60. Rymer, ii. 680. Heming,. 
i. 76, 11. 



INFLUENCE OF WAR ON ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 397 

son would satisfy him. "When the earl was about to leave B00K i y 

J m m CUAP. 1. 

the court, the queen-dowager and the reigning queen urged, 

that in the absence of the duke of Guienne, the point of 
honor should be covered by a temporary surrender of the 
province itself into the hands of the king of Trance. Of 
course the promise was made, that if the territory was so 
surrendered, it should be voluntarily restored. Philip gave 
this pledge in the presence of several witnesses. The sur- 
render was accordingly made. But this done, the earl of 
Lancaster found, to his amazement, that it was in vain to 
remind the king of his promise to restore what had been 
thus relinquished. It is easy to imagine Edward's indigna- 
tion on being apprised of this perfidy." 

But the king of England felt that success against the y^ZT A in * 
Scots was to him a matter of greater moment than any chas- France - 
tisement he might inflict on the king of France. The sum- 
mons from Philip came in 1294, and in the following year 
the French king made a descent on the coast of England, 
and destroyed the town of Dover. It is not, however, until 
the August of 1297 that Edward finds himself in a position 
to attempt the invasion of France. His approach to France 
in that year was through the Low Countries. His army is 
reported as numbering 50,000 men. But his allies are said 
to have been treacherous, the winter soon came, and after a 
campaign of eight months, nothing decisive had been 
done. 

The two kings at length agreed that their differences Peace re- 
should be decided by arbitration, and that pope Boni- 
face should be the arbitrator. To give permanence to the 
settlement so realized, Boniface proposed that Edward 
should marry Margaret, the sister of the French king, and 
that his eldest son should marry Isabella, the daughter of 
that monarch. In the autumn of 1299 the two royal families 
were thus united. f 

Guienne and Poictou were the only provinces of France Accession of 
now in possession of the English. The unhappy reign of 

* Rvmer, ii. 620. Heming. i. 41, 42. Walsing. Gl. 

f Rymer, ii. 761, 795 et seq. 817, 841-87. Heming. i. 112-114, 16-5, 168 
170. Knighton, Col. 2512. M. Westminster, a.d. 1298, 1299. 



39S ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B c«a^ V' Edward IT. extended to twenty years. During some three- 

fourths of that period there were no differences between 

France and England. But in 1324, Edward was summoned 
in peremptory terms to do homage to Philip the Long for his 
French possessions. To evade this demand, the king first 
Bent ambassadors, then his queen, and, lastly, he resigned 
the two provinces into the hands of his son. But his ease 
and self-indulgence were not secured by these means. His 
weakness, his frivolity, and, above all, his favouritisms, had 
filled nearly all the families of the kingdom with disaffec- 
tion, his own not excepted. In the end, he became a 
prisoner in the hands of his subjects ; and his prison, as 
commonly happens in the history of kings, was a near 
passage to the grave. 
theroroof ^ lc g rea * war °^ Edward I., it must be remembered, 
Edward i. Avas Tlot his war against France, nor his war against the 
AYYlsh. It was liis war with Scotland. France did not 
submit to the power of the king of England, but she was 
taught to respect it. The conquest of Wales by Edward 
was complete and final, the heir-apparent to the English 
crown being henceforth proclaimed as the prince of that 
country. But the war with Scotland was waged on less 
satisfactory ground, was more fluctuating, more protracted, 
more costly, and less decisive in its result. The patriotism 
of Scotland rose to its highest in that age. What the Wal- 
laces and Bruces of that country could do was then clone. 
Only the genius of an Edward could have prevailed against 
a people so influenced. But the fact to be especially ob- 
served by the reader is, that in all these wars the English 
feeling grew to be more and more with the king, disposing 
the nation at large to take upon itself many heavy burdens, 
and even to bear with many a sudden and illegal exaction, 
rather than see the national cause dishonoured. The feeling 
which had so long tended to divide Norman and Saxon be- 
came less and less perceptible. Everything that could be- 
speak the growth of a national — we may say, a truly English 
■ — unity, became more manifest almost from day to day. 
Men whose fathers had faced each other at Hastings, now 
took their place side by side in front of the common foe. 



INFLUENCE OF WAR ON ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 399 

The memories of their common home and heritage made B ° 0K l J- 

& Chap. 1. 

them strong in the feeling natural to such relationships. 

The question was no longer what might be possible to Nor- 
mans, but what might be done by the stout heart and the 
strong hand of the English. Wars entail many evils, but 
in this world there is no evil without its good ; and often 
the greatest evil is compensated in being made parent to 
some of the highest forms of good. 

The reign of Edward III., however, was more memo- Edward 
rable than that of Edward I. in its tendency to merge the quarrel 
Norman feeling in this manner in the English. The kings of vaiois. 
of France did much to irritate both the kings and the 
people of England, by the ostentatious manner in which it 
was their pleasure to exact homage for the lands subject to 
the English crown in that country. It is true, the homage 
was not to be understood as paid by the king of England, 
simply by the chief of a province, supposed to exist sepa- 
rately in his person. This distinction, however, was too 
subtle to be easily apprehended ; and one king kneeling 
at the feet of another, seemed in that act to be taking the 
place of an inferior. But the very considerations which 
made this ceremony so little agreeable to the kings of Eng- 
land, gave it importance in the eyes of the kings of France. 
In the second year of his reign, Edward was required by 
the new king, Philip of Yalois, to appear in the French 
court, and there to perform this unwelcome service. 

Edward had more than one reason for looking with dis- 
taste on this summons. His mother, Isabella, was daughter 
of Philip the Fair. The Salic law, which in France pre- 
cluded his mother from the throne on account of her sex, did 
not, he maintained, preclude himself, as her male offspring. 
It was only by repudiating this doctrine, and extending the 
disability, not only to females in the direct line, but to their 
descendants, that Philip of Vaiois had become king. Ed- 
ward, however, deemed it prudent for the present to com- 
ply with the demand of Philip ; but first declared to his 
council, that what he was about to do would be done 
under constraint, and should not deter him from asserting 



400 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B cnip \ V ' ki s right to the crown of France on a future day, should he 



-::- 



see occasion.' 

"What Edward saw of France, and of the French court, 
on this errand, only gave more fixedness and fascination to 
his idea of conquest in that country. In those days, France 
and Scotland were always leagued, either secretly or 
openly, against England. It was in their power to create 
diversions in favour of each other, and so to weaken the 
common enemy. But these double tactics only seemed to 
give a double intensity to the antagonism of the English. 
The enemies of England to whom Scotland was not a place 
of safety, found a ready asylum in France. In 1337, it was 
no secret that Philip had purposed sending considerable suc- 
cours to the party of David Bruce in Scotland. It is at 
this juncture that Edward decides on invading France. 
Effect of It would require large space to describe adequately the 

the wars . l i . i . n . / i j 

of Edward lortuurs of this war during the nine years which preceded 

III on the 

national the battle of Cressy, and the ten years which intervened 

«I>iritof the ^ 7 , ^ . . 

English. between that victory and the victory of Poictiers ; or to 
do justice to those naval achievements in which the king 
commanded in person. < >n land and sea English skill and 
English bravery became the admiration, or the envy, of 
Christendom. The odds arrayed against the English at 
Cressy, and especially at Poictiers, might have seemed to 
preclude all hope of success ; and nothing but the conscious- 
ness of a higher military sagacity in the commanders, and 
of a more thorough military discipline in the men, could 
have prompted either to look on that success as possible. 
On the eve of those battles the perils of the English army 
had reached the lowest point. But the courage evinced in 
those dread hours was not the wildncss of despair — it was 
manifestly the discretion of the wise. The few transcended 
the many in moral power. By that means, and not by 
accident of any kind, the few became the victors. In those 
wars, England began with too much dependence on allies 
and mercenaries. The result was disappointment and dis- 
aster. But to lean on the firm hand and matchless science 
of her own archers, on the line of adamant presented by 

* Rymcr, iv. 381-390. 



INFLUENCE OF WAK ON ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 401 

her own swordsmen, was not to lean in vain, whether in B00K \ v 

' Chap. 1, 

sustaining an onset, moving from an ambuscade, or storm- 

ing a breach. At Cressy and Poictiers the hero was the 
heir apparent to the English throne — that prince of the 
sable cuirass, in whom the highest virtues that fiction had 
been wont to ascribe to chivalry were present and sur- 
passed.* 

The demands made on the resources of England to 
carry on these wars were unprecedented ; and while Edward 
always aimed to take his parliaments along with him, many 
of his expedients for raising money were such as no law 
could be said to have sanctioned. But these burdens, though 
extending over the space of a generation, were in the main 
willingly borne ; and the king was allowed to compensate 
in other ways for the occasional arbitrariness of his proceed- 
ings. It was the English standard that floated over the 
plains of France, or along the skirts of the Grampians, and, 
cost what it might, that standard was not to be prostrated 
or dishonoured. In these struggles there was a largeness 
and depth of feeling which sufficed to put an end to the lit- 
tleness of faction, to extinguish the last remains of the ani- 
mosities of race, and to give a new sense of common interest 
to the heart of the nation. 

It is true, the time comes when the king of Scotland 
leaves the Tower of London to appear again among his 
subjects ; when the king of France leaves those dark walls 
to reascend the throne of his ancestors ; and when Edward 
has to look on almost all the acquisitions he had made as 
having fallen away from him. But it was well that such 
should have been the issue. Had the sovereign of England 
become the sovereign of France, this island must have sunk 
into a mere appanage to that kingdom, and could hardly 
have become the Great Britain now known to history. But 
it was not given to our ancestors in those days to see this 
probable result of successes which they were prepared to 
seek at the cost of so much blood and treasure. Our na- 
tional possessions were not augmented by those wars, but 

* Froissart, bk. i. c. 51, 128-132, 159-164. Rymer, v. 195, 525, 869, 8Y0. 
Waleing. 166-172. Knighton, 5277, 5288. 

Vol. I.— 26 



402 EXGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. the gains of the nation from this source, notwithstanding its 

Chap. 1. ° » O 

expenditure and losses, were great and permanent. Wars 

abroad became the spring of geniality, unity, and power 
at home. 

We are not required to enter into the question of the 
justice or injustice of the wars carried on by Edward L, or 
Edward III. The grounds alleged in defence of those 
enterprises are manifestly untenable, or at the best doubt- 
ful. But the English people did not see them in that light, 
and the effect of those great undertakings on the feeling of 
the nation is a fact wholly independent of such inquiries. 

The French court was little mindful of the treaty of 
Bretigny, which followed the victories of the English. 
Efforts the most ceaseless and unscrupulous were made, not 
only to regain for France all she had lost, but to excite 
opposition to English ride even in the provinces which had 
been then long subject to it. The advanced age of Edward 
III., and the declining health of the Black Prince, were cir- 
cumstances favourable to such a policy. But the fact that 
the next English sovereign bore the name of Richard of 
Bordeaux, in honour of his birthplace, contributed to 
strengthen the English connexion in those provinces ; nor 
could the people of those countries be insensible to the 
mildness of the English sway, compared with that seen to be 
everywhere exercised by the crown of France, 
nemyiv. But Henry IV. dethroned Richard, and became king in 

his stead. France saw in this event a new occasion for 
attempting to spread disaffection among the subjects of the 
English crown in that country. French affairs thus became 
unsettled. Not less so those of Wales and Scotland. With 
hostilities from all those quarters, the new king found him- 
self obliged to deal with disaffection and conspiracy among 
his own subjects, and where least expected. His troubles 
from these sources extend through the first seven or eight 
years of his reign ; and when the prize which he had seized 
appeared at length to have become secure, there was the 
remembrance of the crime by which that end had been 
accomplished, which never ceased to people the conscience 
and imagination of the usurper with unwelcome images. 



INFLUENCE OF WAR ON ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 403 

To this reign belong the adventures of the Hotspurs, Glen- book iv. 

dowers, and others, to whose temperament and character, 

if not to their true history, our great bard has given such 
a vivid reality. 

Henry IV. had wholly lost before his death, the measure 
of popularity he possessed in the early portion of his reign. 
His jealousy and suspicion had extended even to his own 
son, whom he had excluded from all power, civil or mili- 
tary, lest an undutiful and disloyal use should be made of 
it. On his death-bed, the king counselled his son to keep 
the great barons out of mischief by employing them in 
war ; and bequeathed to him the policy of religious persecu- 
tion, as the price that must be paid if the clergy were to 
be used as a balance against the more powerful among the 
laity. The heir-apparent was fully prepared to act upon 
these maxims. 

On the accession of Henry V. the illness of the king of np ? r y Y - 

J ° — state of 

France had left that country to become the prey of two France, 
great factions, those of Burgundy and Orleans. The dissen- 
sions and devastations thus originated covered the land, and 
exposed it to assault on every side. Henry Y. was no 
sooner on the throne than he began to meditate an invasion 
of that kingdom. He had succeeded to the throne of Ed- 
ward III., and in so doing, according to his reasoning, had 
succeeded to the claims of that monarch on the French 
crown. France, moreover, had acted perfidiously and in- 
solently towards England for many years past, and must be 
expected so to do, unless made to feel the impolicy of such 
a course of proceeding. 

Nothing, however, could be more unfounded than the 
claims set forth by the king of England. But the passions 
of the great men, and of the people at large, were in favour 
of the enterprise ; and the clergy, with archbishop Chichele 
at their head, were most vehement in its support — such an 
employment of knights and nobles being sure, it was thought, 
to call off their attention from those ecclesiastical reforms 
on which many of them were disposed to look with too 
much favour. 

Henry left Southampton with a fleet of fifteen hundred 



404 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



War with 
France. 



book iv. vessels, containing 6,000 men-at-arms, and 24,000 archers. 

Chap. 1. # > . 

His first enterprise was against the town of Harfleur. Five 
weeks were consumed in reducing that place. By this time 
September was approaching its close. The English army, 
too, had suffered much from sickness ; and having garrisoned 
the town, Henry decided on returning to England for the 
winter. But the news of the fall of Harfleur, appears to 
have arrested the course of intrigue and faction amongst.the 
French. Tidings now reached the English, that an army of 
more than 100,000 Frenchmen would soon be upon their 
path. Henry might have embarked at Harfleur, and so 
have evaded the enemy. But such a movement would have 
borne too much the appearance of flight. He resolved to 
march in the direction of Calais. This he did without 
hurry and without disorder. The army was not insensible 
to its d.uiger. But the king shared in all its hardships, and 
by his fearless speech and gonial bearing, seemed to infuse 
his own spirit into the humblest of his followers. Of the 
distinctions of rank he would know little. Every brave 
man was to him a man of gentle blood ; and the man who 
should shed blood with him was of his own blood. The 
words of fire which our great dramatist has made him ad- 
dress to those men when about to ascend the walls of Har- 
fleur, are such in substance as history reports him to have 
uttered. No shame of England, or of English blood, in the 
language of that chivalrous descendant from a line of Nor- 



man kings ! 



* Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more ; 
Or close the wall up with our English dead ! 

On, on, you noble English 
Whose blood is fetched from fathers of war-proof ! 
Fathers who, like so many Alexanders, 
Have, in these parts, from morn till even fought, 
And sheathed their swords for luck of argument : 
Dishonour not you mothers ; now attest, 
That those whom you called fathers, did beget you ! 
Be copy now to men of grosser blood, 
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen, 
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here 
The mettle of your pasture ; let us swear 
f hat you are worth your breeding ; which I doubt not ; 
For there is none of you so mean and base, 
That hath no noble lustre in your eyes. 
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, 
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot , 



INFLUENCE OF WAR ON ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 405 

In the evening of the 24th of October, the English book iv. 

& ' o Chap. 1. 

pitched their tents near the village of Agincourt. Fatigued Th ~j^ e 
were they, and in no holiday trim. On that memorable ^f n " 
autumn night they had to lay their account with facing an 
enemy numbering ten to one in the morning. The moon 
shone brightly on their tents, and on the warriors' steel. 
The French might be heard giving themselves to revelry, in 
confidence of victory. The English passed those hours in 
rest, in thoughtfulness, or prayer. The position chosen, as 
at Poictiers, was one in which, from the shelter on either 
flank, the greater number of the enemy could not be used 
to its full advantage. This gave an unusual density to the 
French lines, on which the arrows of the English told with 
terrible effect. Once disconcerted, this crowding became 
a fatal mischief. The English, having exhausted their ar- 
rows, bore down upon the enemy with sword and battle-axe, 
when they became the pressure of order upon confusion. 
The battle lasted three hours. The loss of the English was 
almost incredibly small — it is said not to have exceeded a 
hundred men. Among the slain of the French were the 
Constable of France, three dukes, one archbishop, one mar- 
shal, thirteen earls, ninety-two barons, and fifteen hundred 
knights, besides common soldiers. The captives, too, ex 
ceeded the number of the captors.* 

When tidings of this victory reached England, the joy 
of the nation knew no bounds. The reception given to the 
king was that of a people whose enthusiastic admiration 
could find no adequate expression. 

But this victory, signal as it was, had not sufficed to issue of 
conquer France. Seven years later the health of the king France. 
failed, and his reign closed, leaving his crown to pass to his 
only child, then less than a year old. The war carried on 
by himself or by his adherents, in France, continued to the 
end of his reign ; and subsequently the influence of Joan ot 
Arc imposed a powerful check on English influence in that 

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge, 

Cry, * God for Harry, England, and St. George.' 

Henry V. act i. See Hall's Chronicle. 
* Walsingham, 392. Elmham, c. 24-27. Hall, Hen. V. 16. Titus Livius, 
12-17. Hall's Chronicle. 



our wars in 



406 ENGLISH AND NOKMANS. 

b £ok iv. country. Henceforth, the distractions in France, which had 
done so much to favour the ambitious designs of the Eng- 
lish, were followed by distractions in England, which were 
not less favourable to the reactionary power of the French. 
The war of thirty years which followed the death of Henry 
Y. ended in the seizure, by the crown of France, of the last 
remnant of territory in that country owing allegiance to 
England. From the year 1-451 Calais alone remains in 
possession of the English. Costly as these wars had been, 
the English bitterly deplored this course of events. They 
did not see, that all that could be gained from such posses- 
sions had been gained long since ; and that the time had 
come in which the true policy of England would be found 
in seeking the development of her own resources.* 

* Monstrelet, iii. 82-40. 



CHAPTER II. 

INDUSTKIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FEOM THE DEATH OF 
KING JOHN TO THE ACCESSION OF HENEY IV. 



w 



E have seen that the wars of England during this B ££5 1 £' 
period were many, and often on a large scale. The Th J^diTs- 
expense of such armaments must have been great ; and the $ Europo 
productive power turned aside by such means from its bet- ^"pon tc 
ter uses, must also have been of large amount. But in such spfr™ lhtary 
portions of history there is more included than lies upon the 
surface. It is certain that a nation capable of waging costly 
wars cannot be a poor nation. Where so large an expendi- 
ture in that particular direction was possible, the industry 
and skill in other directions must have been considerable. 
Kings of England who could aspire to make themselves 
kings of France, must have felt that they were masters of 
no mean resources. Prevalent as wars may have continued 
to be during the thirteenth and two following centuries, the 
power of the arts of peace gains greatly during this period 
upon the power of the sword. Commerce may be seen 
rising fast towards the place of influence which was to be- 
long to it in the history of modern Europe. 

In English history, the spirit of the Crusades may be 
said to have spent itself with the reign of Richard I. But 
the impetus given by that movement to naval and commer- 
cial enterprise remained. The cities of Italy rose to opu- 
lence, in great part, by means of those memorable migra- 
tions from west to east : and when that source of profit had 
ceased, the Italian republics were found capable, not only 
of sustaining, but of surpassing, their former splendour. 
The ships of Venice and Genoa continued to float on all 



408 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

b0 °k iv. wa ters, from Egypt to Iceland. With the commercial cities 

of Italy we must couple the Hanse Towns of Germany, the 

great trading towns of the Netherlands, and the principal 
seaports of Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Nor- 
way. Commerce led to relations by treaty between Eng- 
land and all those countries.* 

industry Trade in those days, both foreign and domestic, was sub- 

i>?racy? db> ject to many discouragements. One of the most formida- 
ble of these consisted in the prevalence of piracy. The gov- 
ernments of the period were all more or less irregular and 
insecure, especially in their influence on the more remote 
provinces nominally subject to their authority. But if 
licence seemed to increase with distance on the land, much 
more was it thus with distance on the open sea. Trading 
vessels were always armed vessels — were as far as possible 
vessels of war : and the strong too often seized upon the 
weak, even in the time of peace, appropriating the ship and 
the cargo, and despatching the crew. Depredations of this 
nature provoked repri.-als, and large fleets sometimes took 
the quarrels thus originated into their own hands, without 
consulting their respective governments. Almost every 
state had at times its complaint to make of wrong in this 
shape, and often only to be reminded of similar outrages as 
perpetrated by its own subjects. The kings of England 
adopted some severe measures to repress these disorders, 
and not wholly without effect. 

The Nary Tliis evil resulted in part from the fact that the govern- 

of the Mid- r . ° 

die Age. ments of Europe had no ships that were properly their own. 
The different ports of England, especially the Cinque Ports, 
were bound, in return for certain privileges, to supply the 
king, on his summons, with a fixed number of vessels, or at 
least witli a certain tonnage of shipping. As the arming of 
ships consisted wholly in the personal arms of the seamen, 
or of the military embarked in them, this kind of force 
proved sufficient for its purpose. Hence we read of a 
thousand or fifteen hundred ships in some of the armaments 
of England during this period.f 

* Rrmer's Fvdera, ii. 953; iii. 107, 482, 565, 647, 1011, 1028; v. 
569, 703, 719, 734 ; vii. 747. Anderson's History of Commerce, i. 109-301. 
f Anderson, i. 147, 164, 177, 201, 202, 207, 210, 220, 240. 



INDUSTRIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. ^L09 

The disagreements of England in those days were gen- book iv. 

& ° m J ° Chap. 2. 

erally witli France or Spain, rarely with the more commer- Na ~ — 
cial states of Europe. In its hostilities with both those ^eTrMisif 
powers, the superior skill and daring of the English seamen 
were generally manifest. On the morning of the 22nd of 
June in 1340, Edward III., at the head of a fleet of two 
hundred and sixty ships, gave battle at the mouth of the 
Sluys to a French fleet of four hundred sail. The fight was 
obstinate on the side of the French, for they fought to pre- 
vent the meditated invasion of France. But the better sea- 
manship, and the better archery, of the English prevailed, 
aided as those appliances were by the presence and the 
heroic conduct of the king. Many ships were destroyed, 
two hundred were captured, and 30,000 men are said to 
have perished by the hands of the English, or in the 
waves.* 

Ten years later, the Spaniards began to evince that jeal- 
ous and haughty bearing towards England, which was to 
put the firmness and courage of our ancestors to the test 
upon occasion for some three centuries to come. Stimu- 
lated by the French, the Spaniards, in 1350, sent out a fleet, 
which captured or destroyed many ships, engaged in the 
trade between England and its possessions in France ; and 
threatened, by royal proclamation, to put an end to the 
navy of England, and to ride masters of the narrow seas. 
Edward resolved to intercept this lordly enemy on his way 
from Flanders, and for this purpose put to sea with a fleet 
of fifty sail, taking with him his eldest son, the Black Prince, 
and several of his nobles. The historians of the time de- 
scribe the Spanish ships called ' Carricks,' as so many float- 
ing castles in comparison with the lighter craft manned by 
the English. But the Spanish bowmen were no match for 
the English archers. Twenty-six of those floating castles 
were taken, several were sunk, and the loss of life to the 
enemy was great. Spain profited by this sharp lesson. 
She bound herself to good behaviour for the next twenty 
years.f 

* Froissart, i. c. 51. Rymer, v. 195. Knyghton, 25, 77. Wals. 148. 
Avesbury, 54-59. 

f Rymer, v. 679. Anderson's Hist. Com. i. 181. 



410 



ENGLISH AND NOEMANS. 



BOOK IV. 
Chap. 2. 

Impedi- 
ments to 
trade from 
unwise 
legislation. 



Trejudico 
against the 
foreign 

iiiurcliants. 



But this prevalence of piracy, and this dependence of 
governments on trading vessels for their navies, were not 
the only hindrances to commerce during the three centuries 
which preceded the accession of Henry VII. Much of the 
legislation of those times in relation to trade was not less 
mischievous. Edward II. attempted to fix the price of pro- 
visions. The result was a scarcity which put an end to the 
interference* Even Edward III., a much wiser king, passed 
a law which required that no foreign merchant should be 
a dealer in more than one commodity. In this case also, 
the intended remedy soon proved to be more grievous than 
the real or supposed disease. f It was a law also of this 
period, perpetuated through generations, that the chief Eng- 
lish commodities, wool, woolfells, leather, tin, and lead, dis- 
posed of on the Continent, should be sold at one staple or 
mart. The place of sale changed — now at Bruges, now at 
Brabant, or elsewhere — but it was always one place. The 
export of such commodities by any British subject in viola- 
tion of this law, was made felony 4 No Englishman could 
import wine from Gascony — the trade was restricted to the 
foreign merchant. § 

But the English merchants looked with much jealousy 
on all favours shown to foreigners. Until the middle of the 
fourteenth century, every company or guild of foreign mer- 
chants in England, was made responsible for the debts and 
crimes of its members. J In the reign of Henry IV. this 
spirit was carried so far, that it was enacted by parliament, 
that every foreign merchant should expend the money re- 
ceived for goods imported, in goods to be exported ; that 
imported goods should not be exposed for sale more than 
three days ; that such goods should not be sold by one 
foreign merchant to another ; that every such merchant 
should have his host assigned to him, and should not reside 
elsewhere ; and that the penalty of forfeiture should be in- 
curred by any attempt to carry plate, bullion, or gold, and 
silver coin, out of the kingdom.^" In 1289 the city of Lon- 



Walsing. 107. 

Ibid. 27th Ed. III. c. 3. 

Statutes, 27th Ed. III. c. 17. 



f Statutes, 37th Ed. III. 
8 Ibid. 42nd Ed. III. c. 8. 
T" Ibid. 4th and 5th Hen. IV. 



INDITSTKIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 411 

don petitioned the king to banish all foreign merchants ;* B ^f p I 2 V - 
and in 1379 a Genoese who proposed, under sufficient pro- ' 
tection, to make the spices of the East accessible to the 
English at a price greatly below their usual cost, was assas- 
sinated by the traders of the metropolis. So the scheme 
which was thought to menace their profits was frustrated.f 

But the merchants of Genoa, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Italians tho 

-r i Till great car- 

and Lucca were the traders through whom our ancestors rfers be- 

• n • r> tween tho 

became possessed of the natural and artificial products ot the East and 
East4 The Peruchi, the Seali, the Friscobaldi, the Bal- 
lardi, the Reisardi, and the Bardi are among the names of 
different Italian companies or houses in England in the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.§ And it is perhaps 
due to our forefathers to state, that the extortions, the 
usuries, and the ostentatious display of wealth which charac- 
terized these Lombards, as they were called, seemed almost 
to justify the feeling with which they were regarded.! The 
German merchants of the Steelyard were a different class 
of men, and the popular feeling in relation to them was 
different. 

Even these, however, became in many places unpopular, introduc- 
in common with strangers generally, when attempts were weavers. 
made by Edward III. to induce German and Flemish 
weavers to settle in England. Some effort of this sort was 
made by the Conqueror ; and in the History of the Excheq- 
uer there is the record of fines paid to William by the 
cloth weavers for the conservation of their privileges.^ Be- 
fore the death of Henry I. this branch of manufacture had 
made some progress, and regulations were issued to deter- 
mine the measure of cloth, and the manner in which it 
should be offered for sale. Similar instructions were issued 
under John and Henry III. But from that time to the time 

* Anderson, i. 181. The first legal encouragement given to foreign mer- 
chants (excepting those of the Steelyard), dates from the reign of Edward I. 
But in the thirteenth year of that monarch the Commons granted the king a 
fiftieth of their movables on condition of his compelling all ' merchant strangers' 
to leave the kingdom. — Ibid. 

f Walsing. 227. % Anderson, i. 131. 

§ Rymer's Fcedera, ii. 705 ; iv. 387. Madox, Firma Burgi, 96, 97, 275. 
Anderson, i. 141, 142. 

I Anderson, Hist. Com. i. 137, 167, 181, 1S9. M. Paris, 286. 

"[[ Madox, c. xiii. § 3. 



412 ENGLISH AND NORMANS 

book iv. of Edward III. our statutes are silent on the subject. Ed- 
— — ' ward issued a proclamation promising his protection to all 
foreign weavers and fullers who should settle in the country. 
The king's marriage with Philippa, daughter of the earl ol 
Ilainault, may have disposed him towards this exercise of 
his patronage, though the folly of sending English wool to 
the Continent, that it might be sent back again as cloth 
was a sufficient inducement. Many Walloon families set- 
tled in England. The natives, as usual, denounced the 
strangers as intruders and monopolists, and sometimes rose 
in outrage against them. In 1337 several statutes were 
enacted for their further protection. The use of foreign 
cloth was interdicted, except to the members of the royal 
family. It was made felony to export wool ; and so rapid 
was the advance of this manufacture, that before the close 
of this reign fulled woollen cloths were an article of English 
exportation.'- 
Merchants Mention is frequently made at this time of the Merchants 

staple. f the Staple. This was a chartered company, consisting at 
first wholly of foreigners. It pertained to them to collect 
all the wool, wool-fells, leather, tin, and lead designed for 
exportation. These commodities they were to deposit in 
certain towns called 'staple' towns, that they might there 
be subject to the king's customs ; and they were then fur- 
ther responsible for seeing these products conveyed safely to 
Calais, and their value returned in goods, coin, or bullion. 
In 1458, the sum contributed by this company to the excheq- 
uer was 68,000Z. in the money of that time.f 
company of The company of St. Thomas a Becket consisted of Eng- 
aBeckJt. lish merchants who possessed the privilege of exporting 
woollen cloth, and of course does not date earlier than the 
time when the English began to manufacture their wool for 
themselves. This company at length absorbed the ' Staple ' 
company, and was itself ultimately merged in the great 
company of Merchant Adventurers.:}: 

* Hovcden, ad an. 1197. Rymer's Feed. iv. 496 ; v. 427. 1st Ed. III. c. 
1, 2, 3, 5 ; 50th Ed. III. c. 7 ; Eden, c. i. 

\ Statutes, 27th Ed. III. Anderson, i. 276. Statutes, 18th Hen, VI. c. 
25. 

% Anderson, i. 233, 260-276. 



INDUSTEIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 413 

These companies were all founded, more or less, on a ^hIpV 
principle of privilege and monopoly. To expect that the Ee] ^~ of 
political economists of those days should have seen this ^nd m"no 3 - 
principle as it is now generally seen, would be to expect ^vern- 
that our remote ancestors should have learnt lessons from ment 
their limited experience, which we have ourselves been 
rather slow to learn from experience of a much larger de- 
scription. During the period now under review, the fiscal 
machinery for carrying on government after our manner 
did not exist, and could hardly have been made to exist. 
Companies did, in this respect, a great part of the work of 
government. They superintended exports and imports, and 
gave reports and results. The only disputes in relation to 
them were, not disputes in regard to the principle of exclu- 
sion on which they were based, but such as consisted in the 
complaints of natives against foreigners, or of one company 
against another. Nor was it the import and export trade 
only that was subject to these restrictions ; the inland trade 
fell in a great degree under the same kind of regulations. 
Our kings taxed these companies themselves, very much at 
their pleasure, and taxed others by their means ; and it is 
not until the age of Elizabeth that we find the abuses con- 
nected with this usage so great as to cause complaints 
against ' monopolies ' to become a popular cry. 

But with all these impediments, and more, English The Eng- 
industry became more skilful and productive, more ex- come en. 
panded and organized, with every generation. In the fif- foreign 
teenth century, the English merchants began to conduct 
their own traffic in their own ships in the Mediterranean.* 
In the great fairs of the Netherlands the English were the 
great traders, f At home, the merchant often rose — as in 
the instance of a Canning in Bristol, and of many such in 
London — to be men of large wealth, vieing with the noble, 
if not with the princely. Among Canning's ships was one 
of nine hundred tons4 Sebastian Cabot, the real discov- 
erer of America, sailed from Bristol. Besides their manu- 
factories, their warehouses, and their guild-halls in this coun- 

* Anderson, i. 223, 296, 301. Rymer, xii. 261. 

f Hakluyt, 197. % Anderson, i. 271. 



414 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. try, our merchants had their ' factory ' companies and estab- 

Chap. 2. •" » ■*■ 

lishments in nearly every state of Europe, from Italy to 

Norway.* It was this industry which enabled the nation 
to bear the cost of its many wars, and the still greater cost 
of the relation in which it stood to the rapacious court of 
Borne. The inland roads were few — mostly for the pack- 
horse, rarely for wheels. Bridges were not numerous, often 
out of repair ; and the fordable points of rivers were so fre- 
quently impassable, that villages and towns grew up in 
such places to accommodate detained travellers. Hence the 
many towns having names ending with ' ford.' The tolls on 
roads and bridges were, at the same time, considerable, in 
some districts arbitrary and oppressive and made sources of 
feudal revenue. Time, however, gradually diminished these 
inconveniences and grievances ; and that English arm 
which knew so well how to spring the bow or wield the 
battle-axe, achieved for itself conquests over difficulties of 
other kinds, on a scale sufficient to make the England which 
owned the sway of the Tudors a far more wealthy inheri 
tanee than it had been in the hands of the earlier Planta 
genets. 

It was natural that this progress in industry, ingenuity, 

and wealth, through the towns of England, should have 

made them centres of a new feeling of independence. From 

the towns this feeling passed into the country at large. 

impedi- It is to be regretted that our knowledge concerning the 

menta to ° . 

agriculture, agriculture of the Middle Age does not keep pace with our 
knowledge concerning other departments of its industry. 
Husbandry can be successful only in proportion to the skill 
and capital expended upon it. But rude ages do not supply 
skill, and the irregularities of such times are unfavourable 
to outlay. Long after the irruption of the northern nations 
the greater part of Eu\*ope remained uncultivated. The 
tilled and enclosed lands, in most countrcs, were not more 
than a fraction of the soil that might have been brought 
under such culture. To the soil wheh was left as common 
land, that must be added which was covered with forest, or 
allowed to become mere moor-land or morass. "Wars, uncer- 

* Rymer, Tiii, 360, 464, 511 ; x. 400. 



INDUSTRIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 415 

tainties of tenure, heavy manorial exactions, and a general B %°^ l J 

prejudice against the enclosure of waste lands, were all causes 

tending to perpetuate this indifferent state of agriculture. 

"We have seen that at the Conquest, agriculture in 
this country was accounted as in an advanced state, not only 
by the Normans, but by the French. In comparison with 
Germany, and other European states, its condition must 
have been still more favourable. But the face of England, 
even when the earlier effects of the Conquest had subsided, 
and when the new order of things had become compara- 
tively settled, was little like the present. Many of the cas- 
tles of those days still exist, more or less in decay. But 
the deep forests which they overlooked, or in which they 
were embosomed, are gone. The cleared ground, here and 
there, amidst the woodlands, has expanded into a wide and 
fertile husbandry. Even the bogs have become fruitful 
fields ; and the rude cabins in which the serf or the villein 
housed their families, have been displaced by the cheerful 
village homes, which now rise up everywhere, by the side 
of village roads which seem to reach almost everywhere. 

If we may credit Domesday Book, the proportion of 
cultivated to uncultivated ground in England towards the 
close of the eleventh century, was surprisingly small. But 
the accuracy of many entries in that record may be 
doubted ; and the twenty years which intervened between 
the battle of Hastings and the taking of that survey, were 
years of such ruinous disorder, that agriculture must have 
suffered greatly. Before long, however, the Norman began 
to see that he must cease to be spoliator, or cease to have 
a property in his land. Encouragement, accordingly, was 
given, after awhile, to rural industry. One of the earliest 
indications of progress was seen in the enclosure of marsh 
and waste lands. Ground was frequently parcelled out on 
certain conditions among the villagers, which they culti- 
vated, and which became by degrees private property. 
Men of some substance frequently purchased the right of 
enclosure. An act of parliament, in the reign of Henry 
HE., empowered the lord of the manor to take this course 
with his waste lands, sufficient pasture being left for the 



416 ENGLISH AND NOBMANS. 

B chI^ T 2 V ' common use of the freeholders. The ground brought under 

cultivation, in different ways, increased so steadily, that in 

the thirteenth and fourteenth century the enclosed land in 
the southern and eastern counties was nearly as extended as 
at present. In the west and the north, much remained to 
be done. Of the proportion of arable land to pasture land 
we know little, as in the reports concerning pasture land 
the distinction between the enclosed and the unenclosed 
was not generally observed.* 

a com-iaw. In 1-125 a law was passed granting a general permission 
to export corn, with two restrictions only — it was not to be 
sent to the country of an enemy in time of war ; and it 
might be stayed, when the public good seemed to require 
it, by an order from the king in council. Some twenty 
years later, the landholders began to complain of the undue 
importation of corn, alleging that it had reduced the price 
of that commodity so as to have brought the farmer to the 
verge of ruin. The result was the enacting of a corn-law, 
which provided ' that when the quarter of wheat did not 
exceed the price of 6s. $d., rye 4s., and barley 3s, no person 
should import any of those kinds of grain upon forfeiture 
of the same.'f 

increase of The progress of the industrial arts, by adding so much 

free labour , ? . , . . ' * ° , ,, 

to the population and importance ot the towns, made them 
a refuge to multitudes who were not at ease under the harsh 
treatment of the baron or the manorial landlord. Even the 

* From some facts known to us, the nobles of the Middle Age would seem 
to have been to a large extent the cultivators of their own estates — and the land- 
lords in general appear to have been men of large estates. 'The extensive 
county of Norfolk had only sixty-six proprietors. The owners of such extensive 
possessions resided almost entirely on their estates, and, in most instances, kept 
them in their own hands. The elder Spencer, in his petition to Parliament in 
the reign of Edward II., in which he complains of the outrages committed on 
his lands, reckons among his movable property, 28,000 sheep, 1000 oxen, 1200 
cows, 500 cart-horses, 2000 hogs, 600 bacons, 80 carcasses of beef, 600 sheep in 
the larder (the three last articles were probably salted provisions), 10 tuns of 
■ cyder, and arms for 200 men : and in the following reign, in 1367, the stock on 
the land of a great prelate, the bishop of Winchester, appears, by an inquisition 
taken at his death, to have amounted to 127 draft-horses, 1556 head of black 
cattle, 3876 -wethers, 4777 ewes, 3451 lambs.' — Eden's State of the Poor, i. 
54. From these facts it has been reasonably inferred that the greater part of 
Spencer's estate, as well as of the other nobility in those times, was farmed by 
the landlord himself, managed by his steward or bailiff, and cultivated by his 
villeins. 

\ Statutes, 4th Hen. YI. ; 3rd Ed. IV. Sir F. Eden's State of the Poor, 
c. i. 



INDUSTRIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 417 

slave, as we have seen, if he could only manage to retain book iv. 

' ' . Chap. 2. 

his footing for a year and a day in a town, became free. 

Additions were thus constantly made to the constantly 
increasing numbers in such places who would be born free. 
In the meanwhile, the causes which had long tended to in- 
crease the number of comparatively free labourers, and free 
tenants, upon the soil, had therein increased the class of per- 
sons who would be sure to direct their thoughts, more or less, 
towards town-life, as towns became distinguished by intelli- 
gence, wealth, and comfort. Even the abbey lands, in this 
view, became a normal school for citizens. The wars, too, of 
our Norman kings, especially those of Edward I. and Edward 
III., carried on as they were in a foreign land, disturbed 
all those feudal relations which had connected the people 
of England so immediately with its soil, and brought about 
a large amount of virtual manumission. Military life and 
feudal serfdom, or even feudal villeinage, were little com- 
patible. The service of the soldier, which took him from his 
home, and often out of the kingdom, detached him of neces- 
sity from predial servitude ; and the service of the sailor was 
always left, for the same reason, to be that of the free-man. 
In the fourteenth century this constant drifting of the pop- 
ulation from the country to the town, had so diminished 
the number of agricultural labourers, that great complaint 
arose on that ground ; and when, in 1349, the great pesti- 
lence diminished the hands left for such labour still more, 
the parliament began to take the question of employer and 
employed under its consideration, as the great question of 
the time. 

The course taken by the parliament was, to fix the parliament 
wages for all kinds of husbandry and handicraft, and to e if wages. 
make it penal in any man to refuse to do the work required 
from him on the prescribed terms. At the same time, se- 
vere regulations were adopted against all begging by able- 
bodied men. To work for a given wage or to starve, was 
the alternative which these laws were intended to place 
before every working man. At first, wages were thus fixed 
wholly irrespective of the varying price of commodities. 
But subsequently, either better knowledge or better feeling 
Vol. I.— 27 



418 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B c£S.2 V ' disposed the legislature to amend its proceedings in this par- 
ticular. But to the last, our parliaments, during this 
period, never seemed to doubt that they were more compe- 
tent to judge than the parties themselves, concerning what 
the relation should be between master and man. 

It was found, however, to be more easy to issue regula- 
tions on this subject, than to secure obedience to them. The 
spirit of resistance appears to have been general and deter- 
mined. Hence, in 1360, ten years later, the Statute of 
Labourers enjoined that no labourer should quit his abode, 
or absent himself from his work, on pain of imprisonment 
fifteen days, and of having the letter F fixed upon his fore- 
head with a hot iron. It was further provided in this stat- 
ute, that the town refusing to deliver up a runaway labour- 
er, should forfeit ten pounds to the king, and five pounds to 
the employer. In 13TS the commons repeat their lamenta- 
tion over the general disregard of this statute. Husband- 
men, they say, continue to fly to the great towns, where 
they become seamen, artificers, and clerks, to the great 
detriment of agriculture. After another ten years, we find 
the same assembly deploring the same evil, in the same 
terms, and endeavouring to correct it by new penalties. So 
far did our parliaments carry their meddling in such things 
in those days, that they determined the kinds of food the 
labourer should eat, and the quality of the cloth that he 
should wear.* 

These facts are all significant. They not only show us 
what were the notions of political economy prevalent with 
our legislators in those days, but, what is much more mate- 
rial, they show us that the great mass of working men in 
town and country had now become to be free men, claim- 
ins the right to take their labour to the market that should 
be most to their advantage. In this fact we have a great 
social revolution. 

Our House of Commons does not appear to advantage 

* The Rolls of Parliament contain much relating to this subject. See 
ii. 296, 340 450; lii. 46, 49, 158. Sir F. Eden, On the State of the Poor in 
England, c. i. It is evident that the clergy, to their honour, deemed the new 
laws concerning labour severe, and that the abbey lands became a refuge tc 
many who had been much oppressed elsewhere. 



INDUSTRIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 419 

in their manner of dealing with this question. It should book iv. 
have seen, that to become a party to such laws in relation to 
industry, was to become a mere tool in the hands of the 
Upper House. The rod of feudalism was visibly broken, 
and these commoners belonged to the class of men who had 
broken it. Consistency required that they should hare 
done their best to strengthen the work of their own hands. 
But, in common with many timid reformers, they appear to 
have become alarmed at their own success. It was this 
middle-class caution which disposed them to take the side 
of the barons, when they should have taken the side of their 
dependents. 

Not that the rate of wages in those times, as compared v ^ e in of t ^' 
with the price of commodities, was such as to constitute a { ^^y th 
serious ground of complaint. Indeed, it is hardly to be 
doubted that the working men of England in the fourteenth 
century, were better able to sustain a family by their earn- 
ings than the same class of men among oursel ves. If the most 
competent judges are right, in supposing the population of 
England in those times to have been less than three mil- 
lions, we have only to remember the drain that was made on 
that population by almost ceaseless wars, and by occasional 
pestilence, to feel assured that labour must then have been 
a commodity of high value. This fact may suggest that the 
condition of the industrious classes in England under our 
Norman kings, could hardly have been so degraded as it is 
sometimes said to have been, and may suffice to explain how 
the people of this country came to be distinguished by that 
feeling of independence, and that passion for freedom, 
which is so variously, and so generally, attributed to them 
by ancient writers. In such a state of society, the servile 
class would be too valuable as property, not to be on the 
whole well treated, and everything would naturally tend 
to hasten the extinction of such service. One of the most 
cautious of our historians, after the most careful investi- 
gation of the subject, supposes a penny in the time of 
Edward III. to have been equal to two shillings of our 
present money.* The Statute of Labourers, accordingly, 

* Hallam's Middle Ages, iii. c. ix. p. 2. 



420 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



b £ok rv. which, in 1350, fixed three pence a day, without food, for 

a reaper in harvest time, determined that the pay for such 

service should be in reality equal to six shillings a day. At 
other times, the wages were no doubt something lower, but 
rarely so low as not to leave the condition of the husband- 
man one of comparative comfort. Hence animal food was 
more or less common on the tables of working men, and to 
this cause Sir John Fortescue attributes the strength and 
courage which made the English so superior to the French. 
In the time of Henry YI. a penny was not worth more than 
sixteen pence of our money ; but the wages of the reaper, 
and of a common workman employed in building, were in 
nearly the same proportion above the average in the time 
of Edward III. It is to be remembered, too, that in those 
times, neither rich no/- poor were accustomed to look on 
many of the luxuries or comforts familiar to ourselves as at 
all necessary. The probability seems to be, that the artisan 
and labouring classes under the Plantagenets, were on the 
whole better fed, better clothed, and better housed, than the 
majority of the same class in our time. There is much, 
in the descriptions of the common people of this country 
in our old historians and poets, especially in the pages of 
Chaucer, to sustain this view.* 

So, by slow degrees, the children of the soil of England 
rose in influence, and in the consciousness of possessing it. 
The Saxon element again became ascendent in our history, 
and the feudal element declined. It was the work of a 
single generation to give completeness to the feudal system 
in this country. It was the work of many generations so 
far to displace it. 

"We have seen that the Saxon and Danish periods in 
English history were in many respects unfavourable to the 
progress of industrial art ; and the same may be said of the 
times which followed, until something more than a century 
has passed. But we have now reached the point when two 

* Eden's State of the Poor, c. i. In the fourteenth century the work of a 
labourer could purchase as much wheat in six days, as would require the work 
of ten or twelve days from the modem labourer. The relation between the rate 
of wages and the price of meat was in nearly the same proportion. But this was 
the rate of harvest wages, and somewhat above the ordinary payment. — Hallam's 
Middle Ages, iii. 453. 



Decline of 
feudalism. 



Industry 
post and 
present. 



INFLUENCE OF WAR ON ENGLISH NATIONALITY. 421 

probabilities concerning the future of this country become B o° K * v 

perceptible. England now promises to be a great indus- 

trial power, and a power of much influence in Continental 
affairs. The nation has become one, is comparatively free, 
and the land is covered with myriads of men busy in con- 
structing ships, in creating towns, in rearing castles and 
cathedrals, in adorning palaces, and bent on competing in 
artistic skill with the most favoured states. The ships of all 
countries float in the seaports of England ; and the English 
merchant, visited by traders from all lands in his own mart, 
is greeted in his turn in the marts of distant nations. The 
influence of this industrial power on the intelligence, the 
liberty, and the religion of the nation remains to be con- 
sidered ; while, in regard to foreign politics, the relations 
which subsisted between our Norman kings and France, 
continued long enough to raise this growing unity and 
wealth of England into the place of a new power in the 
affairs of Europe. 



CHAPTER III. 

INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FEOM THE DEATH OF 
KING JOHN TO THE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. 

B cnA^.8 V ' T^HE settlement of the English language in its substance 
settlement as wc now possess it, was the work of the thirteenth and 

English fourteenth centuries. Tlie writings of Chaucer and Barbour 
show that over nearly the whole of the country which now 
bears the name of England, together with the Lowlands of 
Scotland, the language spoken during the latter half of the 
fourteenth century was in the main the same, and, in fact, 
the language we now speak. Cornwall had a dialect of its 
own ; the "Welshman spoke his "Welsh, and the Highland- 
man spoke his Gaelic ; but the speech of Britain every- 
where else was the English tongue. The clerk might write 
in Latin, and sometimes converse in it ; and nobles, with 
others who aspired to be of the upper class, might still show 
some fondness for the use of a deteriorated Norman-French ; 
but with the nation, the English was felt to be the tongue 
of the country, and was spoken of as such. It was the 
language commonly heard from the lips of courtiers and 
peasants — bating, of course, the difference which is always 
observable in the utterance of the same tongue by classes 
so much severed from each other.* 

* Chaucer describes the Prioress, in his Canterbury Talcs, as speaking French 
fluently, but adds that it was French as taught in the school at ' Stratford atte 
Bow,' of French as spoken in Paris she had no knowledge. ' Let the clerkes,' 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 423 

The Anglo-Saxon language, as it obtained in this coun- b c °ok iv 



try before the Conquest, began about a century later to give 
place to the language since known as English. For a con- 
siderable interval this change consisted much less in the 
adoption of anything new from the French, than in the 
natural simplification and development of the Saxon. Not- 
withstanding the disadvantages of their condition, the Saxon 
population grew in numbers and in intelligence. Men 
whose names bespoke their Saxon origin, are found among 
dignitaries in the church, and among professors in the uni- 
versities. The English language shared in this improve- 
ment, becoming more easy in its structure, and possessing 
a greater fulness of expression. The fact that the French 
was so long spoken side by side with the Saxon, must have 
made the English familiar with many words and forms of 
speech which were of French origin. But, on the other 
hand, French, as the language of conquerors, possessed 
no attraction for the conquered. It does not appear, accord- 
ingly, that the influence of the French language upon the 
English was very perceptible, until the French, in its turn, 
began to give place to the improved native dialect. As 
the Norman learnt to use the speech of the Saxon, the 
Saxon felt less indisposed to express himself in terms 
borrowed from the Norman. The result of the admix- 
ture thus realized is seen in the language of Chaucer 
and "WyclifFe — the language of the former embraces that 
freer use of terms from the Norman common with the 
more educated classes ; that of the latter consisting of 
the more pure and idiomatic Saxon prevalent with the 
people at large. The framework of the Anglo-Saxon 

says Chaucer, ' endyten in Latyn, for they have the propertye in science and the 
knowinge in that facultye, and lette Frenchmen in theyr Frenche also endyte 
theyr queynt termes, for it is kyndly [natural] to theyr mouthes ; and let us 
shewe our fantasyes in such wordes as we learneden of our dames [mother] 
tongue.' In 1385 a writer makes mention of the teaching of English as having 
become common in all the schools of England, to the neglect of French, and 
comments on the advantage and disadvantage of the change. — Trevisa's transla- 
tion of Higdcn. See Tyrwhitt's Es&ay on the Language of Chaucer. The 
statute passed which required the pleadings in the law courts to be in English, 
not as hitherto, in French, dates from 1362. But the language from the throne, 
if not the language used in parliament, continued to be French for some time 
longer. This law, in fact, ordained that ' all schoolmasters should teach their 
scholars to construe in English, and not in French, as they had hitherto used.' — 
Pari. Hist. i. 127, 128. 



424 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B c£^.3 V ' remains through all changes, and all adopted words are 
made to conform to it. The words, too, which are expres- 
sive of common objects, and common relations, are nearly 
all Saxon to the last. The new words retained, have to do 
mostly with the new objects, and forms of life introduced 
by the strangers. As before stated, the wars between 
France and England, during the long reign of Edward III., 
tended strongly towards this severance between the lan- 
guages of the two nations thus opposed to each other, as 
between much beside. During the fifteenth century, our 
language suffers from the pedantic use of Latin words, 
more than from any other cause. 

French C me- But the influence of the French language in this coun- 

manw. " try, was strengthened for a while by the action of the met- 
rical and romance literature which became prevalent. For 
a time this literature was confined to the French language. 
The traces of Saxon or English verse from the Conquest to 
the latter half of the thirteenth century are singularly few 
and meagre. By the latter period, according to the best 
critics in such matters, some of our most popular metrical 
romances — such as Sir Tristem, King Horn, King Alex- 
ander, and JIavelok the Dane — began to make their appear- 
ance. Marie dc France, Denys Pyram, Grossetcte, Wad- 
ington, Chardry, Adam de Ros, and Helie of Winchester, 
are among the writers born or resident, in England, who 
distinguished themselves about this time as the writers of 
French verse. While the French language was so generally 
understood, from its being to many their native tongue, 
these writers were all more or less read. But the time 
was at hand in which the spirit of these performances was 
to migrate from the French language into the English. 

Rise of me- It is a common remark, that poetry, or verse, has been the 

trical com- _ ... 

earliest form of popular literature in all nations. It was thus 
assuredly in the history of English literature. The Latin 
poetry or prose, which may be said to have preceded the 
English metrical romances, came from ecclesiastics, and 
was designed for readers of that order. The first use of the 
English language for the purposes of an English literature, 
was in the ballad, or in the tale elaborated into verse. The 



English. 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 425 

earliest of those tales or histories in English verse, which B {^, l J- 
were to be so multiplied in this period of our history, may 
be dated from about the middle of the thirteenth century 
During the next century and a half, there was an extraonli 
navy supply of such works. The pieces which have sur 
vived, and which have been printed within the last hun- 
dred years, form a considerable library. They were to the 
readers of those times, what the Lady of the Lake, and 
Marmion were among ourselves in the first quarter of the 
present century. 

But the differences between the modern poetical romance 
and the ancient, were in many respects great. In most 
cases the story passed into English from the French. This 
was the case even with that large portion of those tales 
which were clearly not themselves of French origin. Italian, 
and still more British, traditions, were made accessible to 
the English bard almost exclusively through the French. 
British legends had found a home in Wales, in Scotland, 
and in Brittany, when little or no place was left to them 
in England. Creations of Italian, and even of the Arab 
genius, would make their way more readily to the south of 
France, than directly to the shores of Britain. By the 
residence of the popes, during the greater part of a century 
at Avignon, France and Italy became almost as one coun- 
try. Tyrwhitt doubts if there be a single composition of 
this description in our language before the age of Chaucer 
which is not a translation, or an imitation, of some earlier 
composition in French. This scale of borrowing was re- 
sorted to with the less scruple, inasmuch as writers of this 
class rarely attached their names to their performances. 
Their works were produced, but by whom was for the most 
part unknown. 

But it must not be forgotten that the prose romance of British t™ 

° - 1 ditions the 

Geoffrey of Monmouth is as old as the oldest metrical ro- p u a ? is ,. / 

" this litera- 

mance in French, and that if the English borrowed, in the tlire - 
manner stated, in the thirteenth century from the French, 
the French had been indebted for a large portion of the 
material of their fictions to the genius of the aborigines of 
this island. The most popular elements of this early 



426 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B chap 3 V " Anglo-Norman literature were manifestly derived from the 
— traditions of the Britons.* 

So general was the disposition to read such writings in 
the fourteenth century, that the romance in English soon 
superseded the romance in French, with every grade of 
readers. The fifteenth century — in nearly all respects an 
interval of retrocession — was less productive of such works. 
The prose romance had then made its appearance ; and the 
earlier metrical compositions needed to be considerably 
modernized. With the sixteenth century came a further 
change in language ; and, above all, the grave struggle of 
the Reformation, which left men as little leisure as inclina- 
tion to occupy themselves with Middle- Age fictions. During 
more than two centuries from that time, this portion of our 
literature appears to have sunk into utter oblivion. Some 
faint memory of traditions concerning Robin Hood is nearly 
all that seemed to have survived. 

character j> u ^ f] ie re ader must not turn to these ancient narratives 

of these me- 
trical com- -with his modern ideas of metrical romance. Marmion, or 

positions. 

the Lady\ of the Lake, in common with Ivanhoe or Bob 
Boy, is designed to present a true picture of the times to 
which the story has relation. But in the case of the ancient 
romance writer, to realize pictures of that description 
would have required, not only genius, but learning, and 
discrimination, much exceeding anything generally pos- 
sessed in those days. Writers of this class, as before ob- 
served, often give you the manners of their own time in 
times long past, and of their own lands in lands far distant. 
Grotesque are the admixtures of this kind which sometimes 
make their appearance. The imagination dispenses with all 
the limits imposed by history or geography. Scarcely less 
strange, in some cases, is the fantastic chivalry to which the 
writer would fain do homage. While in regard to genius, 
a recurrence of the rhyme or metre, is often the only sem- 
blance to poetry discoverable ; and where the passion or 
fancy rises higher, it is too frequently disfigured by conceits 
which you are expected to admire as great beauties, or with 
pedantries, which you are expected to praise as the evidence 
* See pp. 114, 433-437 of this volume. 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 427 

of learning. But our pleasures are comparative. The B ° 0K iv 

tedious in these tales was often relieved by more pleasant 

matter. The writer not unfrequently threw a hearty force 
and directness into his narrative. As a whole, they were a 
marvellous improvement on anything of the kind that had 
preceded them. The rhythm gave them the charm of music, 
and served to aid the memory in retaining them — especially 
some of their more popular and pleasant passages. The 
stories, from their novelty and incident, were generally of 
themselves deeply interesting to the minds to which they 
were addressed, so that little needed to be supplied by the 
narrator to secure attention. To us, however, their value is 
purely historical. They reveal to us something of the cul- 
ture and inner life of our ancestors. In this view their 
errors, rudeness, and imperfections, are hardly less instruc- 
tive than their higher qualities. We judge of men by 
what is pleasing to them or not pleasing, and by what they 
do or cannot do. In this view, the rudest products of the 
past furnish the materials of history for the present. They 
are to us that past, as living in the work of its own 
thought and affection. 

It would not be just to say we have no poetry in the 
English language before Chaucer. The rhyming Chronicles 
of Robert of Gloucester and of Robert de Brunne may not 
be described as poetry. But the verse of Lawrence Minot 
has some of the true inspiration in it. 

In the Vision of Piers Plowman, we find a real paint- nersPiou. 
ing of character and manners, reminding us often of the 
hand of Chaucer in that field of art. The music of this Vision 
comes in part from rhyme, and in part from alliteration — ■ 
from the use of words with the same sound at the close, and 
of others with the same letter at the beginning. The poem 
bears evidence of being written about the year 1360 ; and 
its author is supposed to have been a monk residing some- 
where near the Malvern Hills. It consists of more than 
fourteen thousand verses. These verses embrace twenty 
sections, and each section appears to have been designed to 
present a distinct vision. The plan, however, is but imper- 
fectly preserved. Its object is to describe the difficulties 



428 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. and perils which beset the true Christian pilgrim, who is 

Chap. 3. L ... 

bent on ending the crusade of this life virtuously and 

piously — and the subject throughout is treated allegori- 
cally. The author of Piers Plowman, accordingly, was 
the John Bunyan of the fourteenth century. But the Plow- 
man is of a sharp, satirical temperament. Yice never 
crosses his path without falling under his lash, and the 
stroke never descends so hardly as when the delinquent is 
found under a religious garb. As depicting the great need 
of ecclesiastical reformation, the Plowman has his place by 
the side of "Wycline. But, unlike AVycliffe, he is content to 
censure the men, he spares the system. His censures, how- 
ever, are so far unsparing. This feature of the work made 
it highly popular when it appeared ; and when printed by 
our English Protestants in the sixteenth century, three 
editions were sold in one year. Its popularity shows the 
spirit of the age, especially in reference to church matters. 
That a man of sagacity should have written such a work, is 
evidence that he knew a freedom and boldness of thinking 
to be abroad which seemed to warrant his so doing — and 
the result assures us that he was not mistaken. So the 
Vision conducts us to reality. We have in it both a pro- 
duct and a reflexion of the times. Corruptions of all sorts 
were prevalent. But it is manifest that the moral feeling 
which could detect them as such, and the power which 
could lay them bare effectually, were not wanting. So 
much of the intellectual and the moral aspects of English 
life in the fourteenth century may we see in this old poem.* 
Chaucer. As a satirist of manners, and of the manners of the 

clergy and of the religious orders, Chaucer is not at all less 
outspoken than Piers Plowman. Such freedom was in 
the spirit of the age. It is in the painting of character, 
even to its minutest finish, that Chaucer is especially felici- 
tous, and on such paintings he has bestowed his chief labour. 
He is eminently the poet of men and manners. What may 
be learnt from his pictures touching the religious life of the 
age, we shall mark elsewhere. But poet of manners as 

* The best edition of this work is that by Mr. Thomas Wright, published in 
1342. 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 429 

he is, the compass of subject included in his works is a con- bo °k iv 

spicuous fact relating to them. His characters, and his de- 

scriptions of social life, include the good and bad. Milton 
seems to find it easy to become either angel or devil, ac- 
cording to the occasion ; and Chaucer appears to have the 
power of understanding the pleasures of the most ethereal 
virtue, and those found in the most free and riotous indul- 
gence of the sensuous passions. The comedy and tragedy 
of earth, the hell in it, and the heaven above it, were open 
to him. Hence, while some of his descriptions are so im- 
pure as not to admit of being read to the ear of a second 
person, others are so elevated as to seem to be addressed to 
natures in a higher condition of being than the present. In 
this respect, the compass of his genius reminds us of Goethe. 
His universe embraced the real and the ideal — his poet's 
world, and the world in which he lived like other ordinary 
mortals. Some poets, indeed, have brought a richer inspira- 
tion to the lofty and unseen, but none have seized on the 
immediate and the actual in man or in nature with more 
truthfulness, freshness, or completeness. His men and women 
have the fidelity of a photograph, while every shade is felt 
as coming from the hand of a living artist ; and in regard 
to nature, the blue sky, the floating cloud, the golden light, 
the shady forest, the flowery plain, and the song of birds, 
all have their poetry for him. So, too, had worldly pomp, 
when he thought of its evanescence ; and loving hearts, 
when he thought of their tender sorrows. 

The plant flourishes in the soil and the atmosphere 
genial to it. Culture, even the culture of genius, is to a 
large extent derived. It is the result of the outward acting 
on the inward. Men of genius are as the great mountains 
of a land, piled up from it, but still of it. They do not 
create their age, they become its highest embodiment and 
articulation. Their utterances are the utterances of what 
multitudes about them think, but what few or none about 
them know how to express. What they say, is what all 
men feel they would themselves have said. They act upon 
the time, but the time has first acted upon them. They 
return to it its own — its own with usury. Chaucer was 



430 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. learned in literature. But liis learned material had been 

Chap. 3. 

— made accessible to him by other hands. He discourses on 
themes borrowed from old Greece and old Eome, and from 
modern Italy. Much of this ancient and modern learning 
had come to him through France. But in his day, what- 
ever was French may be said to have been English. With 
the Norman blood came the things which Norman taste 
was disposed to patronize. "What might otherwise have 
been foreign, became naturalized. Then, in regard to home 
subjects, with which the genius of Chaucer is so much 
occupied, the material of these lay everywhere about him. 
His canvas is so rich, because the real life from which he 
copied was so opulent. The spirit of the age was a free 
spirit, such as had not been known since the Conquest, and 
the result was a development of character in individuals and 
classes on a scale new in our history. The charm of the 
poet's pictures rested on their naturalness, on its being felt 
that the types had their prototypes. Mine host of the Tab- 
bard, and the motley cavalcade which he marshals, and 
from whom he gets utterance in such variety, with so much 
skill, were all such as would be felt to be true to the life of 
that time. Men remembered as they read that they had 
seen such people before, and had heard such talk before. 
True, the selections arc sagaciously made. The characters 
have strong individuality. But the poet knew the observa- 
tion of the time to be wakeful, that it was itself disposed 
to make such selections, and well prepared to appreciate 
them when made. Chaucer, then, is to us the man of his 
time, and the study of his works becomes a study of his 
time. The virtue and the villany, the humble piety, and 
the sleek hypocrisy, the strong sense, the sharp wit, the sly 
humour, the jubilant freshness, the bounding frolic, which 
come up before us as we read him, all were in substance 
before himself in the actual life of that memorable four- 
teenth century in English history. In his own great field 
of description, the Father of English poetry is still in pos- 
session of the throne. No man has surpassed him : and in 
the England he depicts, we see all the high qualities in 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 431 

action to which the England of the present owes her great- B ° 0K * v ' 
ness. 

It is common to mention Gower with Chaucer, inasmuch Gower. 
as the two were not only contemporaries and friends, but 
aspired to the same honours. The ' moral Gower,' how- 
ever, as he is called, is not so much a poet as a preacher, 
and his sermons are often not a little wearisome. Episodes 
— disquisitions rather — on such topics as theology, mythol- 
ogy, history, alchemy, and astronomy, are too frequent in 
his pages to allow of their being in any degree popular 
among ourselves, to say nothing of the platitudes and de- 
clamations with which his unskilled and tedious allegories 
are overlaid. But it is certain that these compositions were 
much read by the upper classes in his day, and the Confes- 
sio Amantis, Gower's later and most important work, was 
written in English. Both these facts are suggestive. The 
passion for reading, must have been strong, which could 
surmount such a test of patience ; and a great revolution in 
language and literature must have taken place, when a 
man writes an elaborate poem at the command of a Plan- 
tagenet king, to please a Plantagenet court, and writes it in 
English. Considerable effort was made to sustain the for- 
eign tongue, as the ' birth-tongue ' of the country was found 
to be fast gaining upon it. When the victory of Cressy 
was to be celebrated, strange to say, it was in the language 
of the vanquished, not in that of the victors. But in 1346, 
Edward III. censured the men who would wish ' to blot out 
the English tongue ;' and in 1349, he appeared at a tourna- 
ment with an English motto on his shield. John of Gaunt 
was still more conspicuous in his patronage of the native 
language : and the insurgents at Smithfield were charmed 
into submission by it, as it was addressed to them from the 
lips of the young king Richard.* 

The oldest prose writer in our language since the Con- English 
quest is Sir John Maundeville. The voyages and travels SaunTo- 

ville. 
* Mr. Coxe, of the Bodleian Library, has shown from the roll of the 
duke of Gloucester's effects at Pleshy in 1397, how much our nobility were 
disposed down to that time to bestow their patronage exclusively on French 
literature. In this catalogue there are more than twenty romances, all of 
which had long been translated into English, but the duke's copies are all in 
French. 



432 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. of this worthy knight are full of Middle Age legends and 

Chap. 3. J & . ° ° . 

marvels. It is not surprising, accordingly, that his narra- 
tives should have been from the first highly popular. Sir 
John brought his thirty-four years' travel to a close in 1356, 
and he introduces himself as follows to the readers of his 
book. "We omit the old spelling, but retain the exact 
words. 

' And for as much as it is long time passed that there 
was no general passage ne [nor] voyage over the sea, and 
many men desire for to hear speak of the Holy Land, and 
ban [have] thereof great solace and comfort, I, John Maun- 
deville, knight, all be it I be not worthy, that was born in 
England, in the town of St. Albans, passed the sea in the 
year of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1322, in the day of St. Mi- 
chael ; and hitherto have been long time over the sea, and 
have seen and gone through many divers lands, and many 
provinces, and kingdoms, and isles, and have passed 
through Tartary, Persia, and Armenia — the Little and the 
Great ; through Libya, Chaldea, and a great part of Ethio- 
pia ; through Amazon, India, the Less and the More, a 
great part ; where dwell many divers folks, and of divers 
manners and laws, and of divers shapes of men. Of which 
lands and isles I shall speak more plainly hereafter. And 
I shall devise you [apprise you of] some part of things that 
there be, when time shall be after it may best come to my 
mind ; and especially for them that will [wish] and are in 
purpose to visit the Holy City of Jerusalem, and the holy 
places that are there about. And I shall tell the Avay that 
they should hold thither. For I have ofttimes past and 
ridden the way, with good company of many lords, God be 
thanked. And ye shall understand that I have put this 
book out of Latin into French, and translated it again out 
of French into English, that every man of my nation may 
understand it.' 

It will be seen that the terms and construction of this 
language differ but little from those now in use among us. 
The prose of Wycliffe is more fluent and forcible than that 
of his contemporary Maundeville ; but it is not in general 
so precise and accurate. Sir John was the man of one 



INTELLECTUAL LITE IN ENGLAND. 433 

book, and at his leisure, and might be expected to be pains- book iv 

taking. The reformer had a different and a greater work 

to do, and less time to bestow on the almost numberless 
tracts and treatises which proceeded from his pen. "We 
should add, however, that his prose in his translation of the 
Scriptures was unsurpassed in his time. In Chaucer we 
have the real man of letters, and we expect his prose to 
present the language in that form in its best condition. 
The following is the first paragraph from his Persones Tale. 
"We again omit the old spelling. ' Our sweet Lord God of 
Heaven, that no man will perish [wills no man to perish], 
but wills that we come all to the knowledge of him, and to 
the blissful life that is perdurable announestith us by the 
prophet Jeremiah, that saith in this wise — Stand upon the 
ways, and see and axe of old paths, that is to say, of old 
sentence, which is the good way, and ye shall find refresh- 
ing for your souls, &c. Many be the ways spiritual that 
lead folk to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the reign of glory, 
of which ways there is a full noble way and convenable 
which may not fail to man nor to woman, that through sic 
path misgone from the right way of Jerusalem celestial ; 
and this way is cleped [called] penitence. Of which men 
should gladly hearken and inquire with all here [their] 
heart, to wit, what is penitence, and whence it is cleped 
penitence, and in how many manners be the actions or 
workings of penitence, and how many species be of peni- 
tences, and which things appertain and behove to penitence, 
and which things disturb penitence.' This is not an im- 
provement upon the prose of Sir John Maundeville, scarcely 
upon that of "Wycliffe, in the most hasty of his composi- 
tions. But we see in it the well-head of the great stream 
now cherished as our mother tongue. 

Chaucer left the English language a powerful instru- occieve and 
ment. But it was a weapon which no poet for more than 
a century after him was competent to wield. Scores of men 
appeared during that period who attempted verse ; but of 
these Occieve and Lydgate are the only names that have 
seemed to be worth remembrance. And even these have 
their place in our literary histories, less from desert, than 
Vol, I.— 28 



434 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. from its being deemed proper, where so many are passed 

by as worthless, to mention at least one or two as being a 

shade better than the rest. 
fnTinflu- I 11 tn ^ s attempt to enter into the educated thought and 

enceofart. f ee i me f our ancestors in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries, the influence of the fine arts in those times should 
not be overlooked. The life of the Conqueror was consumed 
with care to uphold a great military power, and to secure 
the estates and the revenue necessary to that object. His 
son Rufns was still less disposed to look to art as a source 
of pleasure. It is with Ilenry I. that the new movement 
in this direction commences. 
£h i™tnre r " We have seen that the Normans had shown themselves 
toYho^ariy great admirers of architecture before their connexion with 
English. t ^j g coim t rv# j$ u t j n t]n S respect, as in others, the Norman 
intellect had realized little in Normandy compared with 
what it was to realize in England. Saxon architecture was 
a rude imitation of the Roman. The same may be said 
of the Norman. In little more than a century after the 
Conquest, the heavy Norman arches and pillars were to be 
displaced, in nearly all ecclesiastical edifices, by the lighter 
and more elegant constructions now known as the ' Early 
English.' The Norman style was well adapted to fortifica- 
tions and castles ; but when the pointed Gothic made its 
appearance, about the middle of the twelfth century, it 
became at once the favourite with all Churchmen, and in 
those days churchmen were the great architects. Chiches- 
ter, Hereford and Durham, show what the genius was, in 
this respect, which the Normans brought with them into 
England. Salisbury, Canterbury, and York, show the more 
refined conceptions of art which were to become familiar to 
them when they had themselves become more English than 
Norman. 

With this advance of taste in the general form of such 
buildings, came a corresponding improvement in regard to 
everything contributing towards the decoration of them. 
Furniture, sculpture, painting, stained glass, carved wood, 
and monumental brasses, all make their appearance in a 
higher style of workmanship. It was in the cathedrals of 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 435 

England, that the general taste developed itself which was B %°f v X J- 
to extend by degrees to the guild of the merchant, the castle 
of the baron, and the palace of the king. The struggle be- 
tween the Norman and the early English styles of building 
is perceptible to the end of the twelfth century. But from 
that time the English becomes ascendant. The cathedrals 
completed in the time of Henry III. are those of Carlisle, 
Norwich, Peterborough, Rochester, "Winchester, Canterbury, 
and York, and in all these the English taste is predominant. 
The fraternities of masons were of eminent service in these 
works, but the zealous ecclesiastic was the great patron of 
such undertakings, and the gifted Englishman was often an 
able coadjutor in such labours. It is, however, in the long 
reigns of Henry III. and Edward III. that the encouragement 
of genius in this direction is most conspicuous. Henry III. 
knew little of the science of government, but he was a muni- 
ficent patron of art. We still possess records containing 
instructions given by him to a number of architects, sculp- 
tors, painters, and goldsmiths, and stating the sums paid 
for their services.* It seems certain, that in his time, our 
painters painted in oil, but it was no doubt left to Yan 
Eyck to excel them greatly in the manner of using that 
substance. It is certain, also, that their paintings embraced 
historical subjects ; of which some judgment may be formed 
from the sculpture, and illuminated books of the time, and 
from such specimens of painting thus ancient as may be 
seen in the Chapterhouse of Westminster. In several in- 
stances, the artists employed by Henry III. were English- 
men ; and critics in arts say that there are defects and 
peculiarities in the English sculpture, which often bespeak 
the isolation and self-culture of native talent. It is this 
native culture which effects the transition from the rude 
Norman slab which covered the tomb, to the full length 
figure upon it, with its costume and ornaments, and pillow 
for the resting of the head. The tombs of kings, prelates, 
and Knights Templars mark the progress of such tastes. 

* Issues of the Exchequer, by F. Devon, and Rotuli Literarum Clausarum, 
by T. D. Hardy. It would be easy to fill many pages with extracts from these 
eources relating to this topic. 



436 ENGLISH AND N0KMANS. 

book iv. j n the arcliitectural forms and ornaments, in the decorated 

Chap. 3. ' 

windows, the carved oak, the wall and panel paintings and 

in the rich goldsmith-work, of those long-past days, we see 
the pleasant conceptions, the patient.care, and the realized 
ideas, which then lived in the hearts of living men. The 
increasing wealth of the country under Edward III. tended 
greatly to diffuse such tastes ; and tended, we should add, 
to not a little extravagance among the men and women of 
that generation in the fancy and cost bestowed by them on 
their tailoring and millinery. Even parliament interfered 
to check these follies, but with little effect.* 
compara- It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that 

jisss in the the homes of the knights and barons of England were gene- 

Middle Age. ° ° ° 

rally the scat of great refinement and splendour. ' We have 
reached, in this age,' says Mr. Hallam, ' so high a pitch of 
luxury, that we can hardly believe or comprehend the fru- 
gality of ancient times ; and have in general formed mis- 
taken notions as to the habits of expenditure which then 
prevailed. Accustomed to judge of feudal and chivalrous 
ages by works of fiction, or by historians who embellished 
their writings with accounts of occasional festivals and 
tournaments, and sometimes inattentive enough to transfer 
the manners of the seventeenth to the fourteenth century, 
we are not at all aware of the usual simplicity with which 
the gentiy lived under Edward I. or even Henry VI. They 
drank little wine ; they had no foreign luxuries ; they rarely 
or never kept male servants, except for husbandry ; their 
horses, as we may guess by the price, were indifferent ; they 
seldom travelled beyond their county. And even their hos- 
pitality must have been greatly limited, if the value of 
manors were really no greater than we find in many sur- 
veys.'f We have no doubt, that a public dinner given by 
a mayor of London or of Bristol, would have shown more 
signs of opulence and luxury than the proudest barons of 
England had become familiar with in their own halls. 

* Taylor's Fine Arts in Great Britain, i. c. 4, 5, 6. St. Stephen's Chapel, 
where until recently the House of Commons assembled, was built by Edward III., 
and beautiful as that edifice was both in its architecture and sculpture, the paint- 
ings with which its walls were originally covered are said to have been in a higher 
style of taste. — Ibid. i. 156. 

f Middle Ages, iii. 450. 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 437 

The position of Oxford and Cambridge in relation to the book iv. 
intellectual life of this period must have been highly influ- Th ;~~ er 
ential. Nearly all the foundations for the advancement of sitios - 
learning in those places made their appearance during the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. From the almost in- 
credible number of students which are said to have resorted 
to them, the educated thought of the age could not fail to 
be largely of their creation. But the clergy, and the reli- 
gious orders, were the great teachers, and the history of those 
establishments, in consequence, is associated with the eccle- 
siastical, more than with the secular affairs of the time, 
and will come most naturally under consideration when we 
attempt to estimate the religious life of our ancestors during 
this, the best portion of the Middle Age. The youth of the 
upper class, and in a measure of the middle class, appear to 
have given some years to the university studies of those 
days, embracing, as they did, literature, natural science, 
metaphysics, and, above all, theology. 

Still, to judge concerning the intellectual life of England Cit Ufe> 
in such times, we must look beyond what is to be found in 
colleges, or in books. Books are great teachers, but they 
are not the only teachers. Books and men are ever acting 
on each other, and it is their combined influence that makes 
society what it is. London has always been a great educa- 
tor — not less so than Oxford. The handicrafts, the traffic, 
the adventures in distant lands, with which the thoughts 
and passions of that great metropolis have ever been inter- 
ested, have added much to the stock of social intelligence, 
doing largely and directly, what seats of learning can do 
only partially and indirectly. Ingenuity in production, 
skill in trade, concern with government — with government 
at Guildhall and government at Westminster, all have con- 
tributed to elevate the popular capacity, and to give it 
discipline and power. Religion, too, has had its office in 
this connexion, as we shall presently see. In the fourteenth 
century, Oxford had become a place where a bold resistance 
could be at times presented to the papal authority, and even 
to royal authority, in favour of a comparative liberty of 



438 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. thought ; and London had become a place where a puritan 

jealousy of ecclesiastical power, and a puritan passion for 

freedom, seemed to prognosticate revolutions of such a 
nature as the country had not yet seen. 



CHAPTER IV. 

POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM THE DEATH OF 
KING JOHN TO THE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. 

THE relation between a prosperous commerce and politi- ^a*. 1 !' 
cal freedom is rather natural than necessary. Without on"th7r^- 
a moderate share of security for person and property, pro- tVeen con- 
ductive skill will do its work but imperfectly. But even freedom! 1 
an arbitrary government may give sufficient protection to 
the merchant to ensure the accumulation of wealth, and 
with that a high degree of civilization. Such a measure 
of protection was conferred by Philip and Alexander ; by 
Caesar and Augustus ; by the Medici and the Borghesi ; by 
Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIY. But the brilliancy 
of the times with which those names are associated had no 
relation to political liberty. In the sciences, in the arts, 
in the genius of every complexion in those ages, we see the 
splendour, not of the free, but of the servile. It was a gor- 
geous pageant furnished by the slave to his master. The 
language of some men is — give us a nourishing trade and 
you give us everything. But the case is not 'so. "With that 
gain there may come the loss of everything of real value — 
the loss of liberty, and an exchange of the virtues becoming 
the free, for the vices natural to the bondsman. 

Happily, in English history the relation between the The Great 
growing industry of our people and their growing freedom, aftetL 
is at all times perceptible. Even our Anglo-Norman kings onquest 
were not possessed of power sufficient to render it safe that 
they should attempt to dispense with the aid of their subjects, 
either in making laws or in imposing taxes. If there were 
some exceptions to this rule, they were always exceptions. 



440 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B S£*}i ^ i s tnie their Great Council consisted of the chief tenants 

of the crown only — but in them all the sub-tenants were 

supposed to be represented.* Every chief vassal was the 
natural protector of his sub-vassal. It was to the interest 
of the baron that the tenants dependent upon him should 
not be reached by the authority of the crown in any way to 
their injury. He too often oppressed them himself; but 
it was another matter when a third party became the delin- 
quent. In like manner, the king, who claimed all English- 
men as his subjects, became at times jealous of the powers 
assumed by the barons ; and the disagreements between 
these rival authorities, if sometimes a double mischief to the 
poor commonalty, were more frequently an advantage. 
The jealousy of each tended to keep both more within the 
limits of the law, such as it was. 
iicti'on of -^ ut tne representative principle, which had passed in a 

"entitle ' measure from the "Witanagemote of the Saxons to the Great 
principle. Council of the new rare of kings, survived, as we have seen 
in a preceding chapter, still more perceptibly in the usages 
of the Hundred courts, and of the County courts, which had 
been perpetuated from those times. In the levying of im- 
posts and in the administration of justice, the hundreds and 
the counties were all represented by their ' good men,' 
chosen for that purpose. It only remained that the com- 
moner, who was allowed to administer law in the court of 
the county, should be allowed to be a party to the making 
of law in the high court of parliament ; and that the man 
who was summoned to levy local taxes for local purposes, 
should be summoned to levy national taxes for national pur- 
poses, and the substance of our present constitution would 
be secured, even in those remote times. "When this natural 
concession was made to the commoner, no new principle 

* It is clear that their ' Great Council' bore no resemblance to the parlia- 
ments of Faris in a later age, whose province was simply to make record of the 
pleasure of the crown. The barons were convened, in express terms, for con- 
ference and deliberation on public affairs, and they often modified the proposals 
of the sovereign, when they did not supersede or resist them — See Edinburgh 
Review, xxvi. 351 et seq. Allen's Growth of the Prerogative. But it must be 
admitted that the influence of the ' Great Council' is more conspicuous for a time 
in connexion with levying aids, than in regard to legislation. — The Parliaments 
and Councils of England. (Record Commission.) Introd. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 441 

was introduced. It was simply the reasonable expansion of B 2uiH 4 V 
an old one. 

Such a change, however, was not contemplated by the Limited 
authors of the Great Charter. Their great aim was to pro- Great 
tect the subject against the arbitrariness and the spoliations 
of the crown, by subjecting that power more effectually to 
the control of the law, through the medium of parliament. 
But the constitution of parliament remained substantially 
as before. The only representation of the commons was hi 
the class above them — in the nobles — and men do not ap- 
pear to have thought at that time of representation on any 
broader basis. 

One circumstance there was which may have tended for a Gentry- 
time to preclude any such thoughts. All the subjects of to political 
the English crown below the actual possessor of a peerage England. 
were then upon a level. The distinction between gentry and 
commonalty, which obtained so generally on the Conti- 
nent, was unknown in this country. The less military char- 
acter of the feudal system in England is supposed to have 
been the principal cause of this difference, for it soon be- 
came a custom of some prevalence among us to pay a fixed 
sum in lieu of military service. But it followed from this 
fact, that if the principle of representation was to be at all 
extended, it could not be by an easy transition to some 
second privileged class, for that class did not exist. The 
only move possible in favour of that principle, was a move 
in favour of all freemen, whether landholders or burgesses, 
rich or poor. But this great democratic element, when 
once taken up, so as to get a voice in our legislature, was 
to contribute in an eminent degree to the preservation of 
the English constitution in its present form.* 

Just half a century intervenes between the first signing immediate 
of the Great Charter, and the assembling of the first Eng- Great 01 " 1 
lisli house of Commons. Henry III., who reigned through 



Charter. 



* Hallam, Middle Ages, ii. 476, In the custom which grew up in those 
times of allowing lesser tenants in capite to attend parliament along with the 
greater, we may discern a tendency towards the recognition, even in that quarter, 
of a second class of members in the national council. There is what looks like a 
sign of this wholesome innovation in the 15th of John. — Parliaments and Coun- 
cils of England, Introd. xii. Prynne's Register. 



442 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B cui^ 4 V " tn * s wn °i e interval, was wanting in the sagacity and the 
energy required by his position. But even his weakness 
was favourable to the material prosperity of his subjects, 
and to a consolidation of the liberties which they had recently 
acquired. The Great Charter was more than once con- 
firmed.* The practice of making money-grants in parlia- 
ment dependent on a redress of grievances, was made to be 
familiar to the mind of the nation through that long reign. 
Much was still done contrary to law. But a strong curb 
was laid from time to time on the royal prerogative by the 
barons. Even the clergy became zealous to uphold the 
Charter, as affording them their best means of security 
against the rapacity of the court of Borne on the one hand, 
and against the unreasonable demands of their sovereign — 
who was generally the tool of that court — on the other. 
The king taxed his own demesne-lands and towns at pleas- 
ure, but he did not attempt to tax the nation, except with 
the consent of the men who were accounted its representa- 
tives. 

In fact, from this time, a new feeling comes over the 
mind of the nation in regard to everything affecting its lib- 
erties. Those liberties have become greater — more secure. 
The Great Charter has become a great landmark. It has 
diffused new ideas — awakened a new sense of right. The 
sovereign power is henceforth felt to be, and is almost 
everywhere asserted to be, not in the person who is priv- 
ileged to wear the English crown, but in the law which that 
person is bound to observe and to administer. ' The king,' 
says Bracton, the great lawyer of the time of Henry III., 
' the king must not be subject to any man, but to God and 
the law ; for the law makes him king. Let the king, there- 
fore, give to the law what the law gives to him, dominion 
and power ; for there is no king where will and not law 
bears rule.' f Even stronger passages than these occur in 

* ' The Charter of John was, in fact, superseded by that of the 9th of Henry 
III., which has ever since been recognized as the Great Charter of Liberties.' 
— Par', and Counc. of Eng. Introd. Barrington, Observations on the Stat- 
utes, 

f ' Ipse autem rex, non debet esse sub homine, sed sub Deo et sub lege, quia 
>ex facit regem. Attribuit igitur rex legi quae lex attribuit ei, videlicet domina- 
tionem et potestatem, non est enim rex ubi dominantur voluntas et non lex.' — 
Lib. i. c. 8 



POLITICAL LITE IN ENGLAND. 443 

the pages of this eminent authority, showing clearly that no B 2£^ *J 

doctrine which should place the king above the law was 

accounted in that day as endurable. Speaking of the earls 
and barons as possessing at least a co-ordinate authority with 
the sovereign, Bracton writes, ' If the king were without a 
bridle, that is, the law, they ought to put a bridle upon 
him.' * 

Consonant with these doctrines were the proceedings in 
parliament during this long reign. In 1237, the king stated 
that the expenses attendant on his marriage, and on the 
marriage of his sister to the emperor, had exhausted his 
resources. The barons answered that they had not been 
consulted on those matters, and on that ground they did 
not see why the costs should fall on them.f In 1241, the 
sum reluctantly granted, was assigned to the care of four 
barons, that it might be expended for the benefit of the 
kingdom. In 1244, the barons refused to make any grant, 
alleging the mal-administration of former grants as the 
reason, and claiming to nominate the chief ministers.^: In 
1257, the pope had seduced the weak monarch into the pro- 
ject of attempting to make his second son, Edmund, king 
of Sicily. The embarrassments which he thus brought 
upon himself were overwhelming, and called forth the most 
angry feeling on the part of his subjects.§ Hence the civil 
commotion which placed Simon de Montfort at the head of 
the malcontent barons ; and the exigency which led that 
nobleman to assemble the first English parliament including 
representatives chosen by the commons, in addition to the 
peers usually summoned by the crown. 

The writs issued by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, 

* Ibid. lib. ii. c. 16. 

\ In this parliament, however, ' the earls, barons, et 'liberi homines,' granted 
' pro se et suis vilanis' a thirtieth part of their movables.' — Pari, and Councils 
of England, Henry III. The above expression indicates the gradual elevation of 
the class to which the term ' villein' was still applied. 

\ The clergy and nobles deliberated apart, but by a joint committee, pre- 
sented a joint remonstrance, which was ill received, and the parliament ad- 
journed. When reassembled, three weeks later, the king promised to ob- 
serve the liberties sworn to at his coronation, and money was voted. In the 
following autumn the parliament refused an aid against the Welsh. In 1245 
there is the same recurrence of complaints and refusal of a supply. — Pari. 
Hist. 

§ Ibid. i. 15-34. 



The first 
House of 
Commons, 



444 ENGLISH AND NOKMANS. 

B cuap 4 V ' convenm g tliis memorable parliament, required ' the sheriffs 
to elect and return two knights for each county ; two citi- 
zens for each city ; and two burgesses for each borough in 
the county.' The king's ' Great Council ' consisted at this 
time of such peers as were summoned to parliament by the 
king's special writ, and such of the lesser barons or tenants, 
holding a certain amount of land directly from the crown, 
as chose to be present in virtue of the royal proclamation, 
which had given general notice of the time and place of 
meeting. The knights of the shire were chosen by the class 
who were known as suitors in the county courts, that is, by 
all freeholders there present, whether holding directly from 
the crown, or from some intermediate lord, and whether 
holding much land, or the smallest quantity. The statute 
restricting the right of voting for a representative in parlia- 
ment to holders in the value of forty shillings and upwards, 
is not .older than the reign of Henry YI. The representa- 
tives of cities were of course chosen by the citizens, and the 
representatives of boroughs by the burgesses. But the 
exact qualifications of these voters cannot now be deter- 
mined.* On the Continent, the fact that the municipal 
institutions introduced by the Romans had survived, more 
or less, through all the subsequent changes, greatly influ- 
enced the relation of these bodies to the central authority 
of the state. But the usages of the Anglo-Saxon tything, 
and of the Hundred court, exhibit the forms which the 

* Edinburgh Jicv. vol. xxvi. 341 et seq. Ilallam, Middle Ages, iii. 13-29. 
' In cities and boroughs there was no systematic qualification established by law. 
All freeholders probably had not, under Edward I., the right of electing repre- 
sentatives in parliament. Some freeholders certainly had such power ; and the 
freeholders of cities and boroughs within the several shires, if owing suit to the 
county courts, may have concurred in those elections. For the body of the laity 
in those counties in which taxes were usually imposed, some freeholders of the 
county elected representatives for the whole. For certain cities and boroughs, 
representatives were elected by certain persons, according to their various and 
incongruous consitutions, reducible to no system, and depending principally upon 
custom and the terms of charters. In some cases the freeholders in burgage- 
tenure returned members ; in others, the inhabitants at large ; in others, both ; 
in others, all the members of the corporation ; in others, some only ; in others, 
freeholders in burgage with other electors.' — Parliaments and Councils of Eng- 
land, Introd. xxv. This is probably a true account, but the editor of the volume 
from which the extract is taken, seems to be too much disposed to make things 
of this nature appear very unsettled to a late period of our history. It has 
been justly said, that it is well for Englishmen that the question whether they 
are to have liberties or not, is not a question to be decided by a jury of anti- 
quaries. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 445 

principle of self-government assumed in this country, and B o°J I J- 

which prepared the way for the influence of the city and 

the borough on the constitution. 

The imposts levied on counties and on towns were gene- 
rally fixed in each case as the result of conferences with 
smaller bodies of men acting as delegates for a larger body. 
The transition, it will be seen, was not difficult, from such 
conferences in many places, to a concentration of them for 
the common object in one place. Indeed, after the acces- 
sion of Henry III. the assessing of the counties ceased to 
devolve upon the judges on circuit, and passed into the 
hands of four knights freely chosen for that service in the 
county court. On the authority of the Oxford parliament 
of 1258, moreover, every county might instruct its four 
knights to inquire into grievances, and to submit the result 
to parliament.* When Henry was about to sail on his 
expedition into Gascony, he required each county to send 
two discreet knights to meet him and his parliament at 
Westminster. The business of those two knights was to 
confer with the knights from the other counties, as to the 
aid which should be granted to the king.f In these in- 
stances we see the approaches gradually made towards a 
definite and settled representation of the commons in rela- 
tion to taxation, which was the next step to such a repre- 
sentation for the purposes of legislation. 

Of course, the progress of commerce and the increase Ri . in _ 
of towns, of which we have spoken elsewhere, contributed ^ns? of 
to this result. John replenished his exchequer by adding 
to the number of towns which should possess the privilege 
of choosing their own magistrates ; and in the prosperity 
of these incipient hives Of English industry we may see a 
main cause of the great political precedent supplied by 

* The ordinance of this parliament was that, ' in every county, four ' discrein 
et legales niilites' shall be chosen, who are to enquire into grievances, and upon 
oath make a report on the same ; which report, sealed with their own seal and 
that of the county, is to be personally delivered by the sheriffs to the parlia- 
ment to be holdeuat Westminster. 1 — Pari, and Councils of England, Henry III. 
1258. The barons in this parliament went so far as to require that there should 
be three parliaments in a year, and chose twelve ' honest men' to meet the said 
parliaments on behalf of ' the community of the land.' — Ibid. This was seven 
years before the convening of Leicester's parliament. 

•j- Prynne's Register. 



446 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



B cuap T Z' ^Lmtforfs parliament, and of the influence of that preee- 

dent on after times. 

frcftonfor" Leicester hoped, no doubt, so to strengthen his position 
of Lpic™tor D 7 tms expedient as to be able to subdue the enemies op- 
posed to him. But this supposition does not necessarily 
detract either from his patriotism or from his sagacity. A 
patriot might have deemed the thing done a right thing to 
do; and a statesman might have concluded that the right 
time for doing it had come. It is certain that the people 
generally saw the proceeding in this light. Dishonours and 
spoliations eame thickly upon Leicester and his followers; 
but in the esteem of the 'baron's party/ as they were 
called, that is, of nearly the whole commonalty of the land, 
Mont fort was not only a patriot, but a saint and a martyr, 
and Heaven bore witness to the justice of his policy by the 
miracles which took place at his tomb. So men felt and 
spoke through more than one generation. The fact is sug- 
gestive. It shows that the popular love of liberty was 
taking a more practical shape, as well as a deeper root. 
The people were beginning to see where their weakness lay; 
and the memory of Leicester was the more precious to them 
because one of his latest acts had been to point to the quar- 
ter to which they Bhould look for strength. 
-hu ar 'oi-' ^ r w;ls ao * to '"' t ' x l"' l ' t|,( l that Edward I. who had been 

Montopar. m . anns against Leicester, would be found eager to act on 
a precedent which owed its origin to his authority. It is 
not until 1283, ten years after his accession, that the first 
move in this direction is made. In that year, to obtain the 
aid necessary to the prosecution of his war against the 
Welsh, the king convened a sort of parliament, consisting 
of the clergy and the commons only, omitting the lords. 
The representatives of the commons in this instance con- 
sisted of four knights for each county, and two represen- 
tatives from every city, borough, and market town. But 
travelling in those clays being so slow and difficult, the king- 
dom was mapped out into three districts, and the commons 
and the clergy assembled according to the king's writ 
in three places. The first division met in Northamp- 
ton, the second in York, the third in Durham. The 



liameut. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 447 

kins: was in "Wales: but his commissioners were pres- book ir. 

Jl Chap. 4. 

ent at the opening of each of these meetings. A certain 

grant of money being agreed upon, the business of these 
conventions was at an end, and clergy and commoners 
returned to their homes. The barons, we may presume, 
were mostly on military service with the king.* 

In a few months the war in "Wales came to a close. 
Edward summoned a parliament to meet at Shrewsbury ; 
but not more than twenty cities or towns were required to 
send representatives on that occasion. The writs in this 
case were sent to the officers of the borough, not to the 
sheriff of the county. The lords sat in Shrewsbury ; the 
commons and the clergy in Acton Burnet. This sitting at 
Acton Burnet is memorable, inasmuch as there the English 
House of Commons began to concern itself with legislation. 
An act was there passed to give facility to creditors in 
recovering their debts.f 

Five parliaments, however, were subsequently convened, 
without including any representation from the commons. 
It is not until 1205 that the commons are summoned in the 
form which served to fix the constitutional usage in relation 
to them. On that occasion, writs were sent to a hundred 
and twenty cities and boroughs. Most of these sent their 
representatives, a few pleaded great poverty and begged to 
be saved the expense. Twelve parliaments, including such 
representatives of town and county, were convened during 
this reign. The aids granted by the commons were gene- 
rally a third more than those granted by the lords — a fact 
which indicates both the kind and degree of social progress 
which was taking place at that time in England.:}: In these 

* Hody's Convocations, 372-382. Lingard, iii. 334. The writs issued in 
this instance were not to the cities and towns separately, but to the sheriffs, who 
were to send men with full power from ' every city, borough, and market 
town.' 

f Pari. Hist. i. The act was known as ' The Statute Merchant for the Re- 
covery of Debts.' — Statutes at Large. Rymer, i. 247. The following are the 
twenty towns to which writs were sent : — Winchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, York, 
Bristol, Exeter, Lincoln, Canterbury, Carlisle, Norwich, Northampton, Notting- 
ham, Scarborough, Grimsby, Lynn, Colchester, Yarmouth, Hereford, Chester, 
Shrewsbury, and Worcester. — Anderson's Hist. Com. i. 131. Pari, and Councils 
of Enqland, Edward I. 

% Pari. Hist. i. 38-56. Rolls Pari. Ed. I. Parl.,and Councils of Eng- 
land, 51-69. 



448 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



BOOK IV. 
Chap. 4. 



Edward's 
embarrass- 
ments and 
arbritrary 
measures. 



liberal ministrations to his wants, Edward found reason 
enough to reconcile him to this new policy. The commons, at 
the same time, were alive to the .advantage of being able to 
confer together about their common grievances, and to com- 
bine in making redress more or less the condition of sup- 
plies. From the progress of this new — this money power, 
Edward was strongly inclined to overlook the peculiarities of 
feudal tenures, in favour of the money contributions which 
came from all property alike. 

IIa<l Edward I. been disposed towards a pacific and 
economical policy, his sagacity might have enabled him to 
tide over the events of his reign without the aid of parlia- 
ment in any other form than had been familiar to his pre- 
decessors. But the passions of the king, and the necessities- 
of his exchequer, were favourable to the liberties of the 
people. Edward I. was a prince of military tastes, resolved 
to subline Wale- and Scotland, and to make his power felt 
in connexion with his possessions on the Continent. But 
such a policy could not be sustained without a well-fur- 
nished exchequer ; and to secure that object, it became ne- 
cessary that frequent appeals should be made to parliament, 
and, at length, that parliament should be allowed to repre- 
sent the wealth of the commoner, no less than that of the 
noble. We must add, that the public acts of this king were 
too oft in unscrupulous and unjust; and it was one of the 
subtle elements of his rule to make his parliaments share, 
as far as possible, in the responsibility of such deeds. 

It is not, however, until Edward has been king nearly a 
quarter of a century that he convenes the parliament of 
1295, which maybe said to present the first duly recog- 
nized action of our present constitution, as consisting of 
king, lords, and commons. The measures of the king 
during the years which preceded this event were often in a 
high degree arbitrary ; and in subsequent, years his policy 
showed too great a readiness to return to such expedients 
for obtaining money. But, happily, in these later years, 
the strong hand of the sovereign had to compete with the 
strong hand elsewhere. Great was the discontent, both 
in town and country. By his own authority the king raised 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 449 

the duties on exports, especially on the two chief articles, b °ok iv 

wool and leather. In one instance, the ' Merchants of the 

Staple ' were required to lend the entire value of the wools 

they were about to export ; in another, the whole stock was 

seized and converted into money for the king's use. In the 

same spirit, the English landholders were called upon to 

furnish large supplies of cattle, and corn, to sustain an army 

in Guienne. It is true, this last demand was made with the 

promise of payment ; but the creditor in this case was not 

one to be easily sued, and the proceeding was felt to be 

vexatious and dangerous.* 

It was when such measures had put men upon those Resisted by 

t x -i • i *k° ear ' s °f 

private conferences about their common wrongs which are Hereford 

x ° and Nor- 

the natural precursors to open resistance, that Edward med- folk - 
itated sailing with an army to Flanders, and sending 
another to Guienne — the latter under the command of 
Bohun, earl of Hereford, and Bigod, earl of Norfolk. But 
these noblemen were among the chief malcontents, though 
the first was constable of England, the second lord mare- 
schal. Both declined the service assigned them, on the plea 
that they were not bound to serve out of the kingdom, ex- 
cept with the king in person. Edward grew angry, and in 
the height of his passion said to Bigod, ' By the Eternal, sir 
earl, you shall go or hang ! ' The mareschal instantly replied, 
' By the Eternal, sir king, I will neither go nor hang ! ' The 
two earls immediately withdrew, and are said to have left 
the court at the head of some fifteen hundred knights, f 

The aspect of affairs which now opened upon the king The king 
was serious. But Edward decided promptly on the course tnTcm- 
to be taken. That he might be in a condition to humble zens * 
the constable and the mareschal, great effort was made to 
conciliate parties to whom he had often given deep um- 
brage by his arbitrary appropriations of their substance. 
The clergy had suffered often and grievously at his hands ; 
but to clergy, to merchants, and to all parties aggrieved, 
his professions were now those of sorrow that his necessities 
should have been such as to have compelled him to resort 

* Heming. 110, 111. Knight. 2501. Walsing. 69 Dunstap. v. 418. 
f Heming. 112. 

Vol. I.— 29 



450 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

chap I V ' to measures which could hardly have been so painful to 

others as they were to himself. His faults in this respect, 

he acknowledged, had been manifold, but they might be 
sure there would be no return of them. It was to this 
effect that the king addressed a large assembly of citizens 
from a platform in the front of Westminster Hall. At his 
side, stood the young prince, whom, as the heir apparent, 
he commended to their loyal protection, should it be the 
will of Providence to number himself with the slain in the 
intended expedition. At this point the speaker burst into 
tears ; all were moved ; and the faults of the king seemed 
for the moment to have been wholly forgotten by his sub- 
jects in their sympathy with the father and the man. Ed- 
ward accepted their loud acclamations as the pledge of 
reconciliation.* 

The king now ventured to set sail for Flanders. But 
he did so with some misgiving. Some of the most power- 
ful among his subjects addressed to him a formal remon- 
strance, and did not hesitate to describe the enterprise as 
unnecessary, improvident, and hazardous to the peace and 
safety of the realm. 
ThoLon- On the third day after Edward's departure the carls of 

Joners side ^ *■ 

with the Hereford and Norfolk presented themselves before the 

earls. A 

barons of the exchequer, to whom they stated in detail the 
grievances which the nation had Buffered from the hands of 
the king, and forbade them in the name of the barons of 
England, to attempt to collect the eighth granted in the last 
parliament, the said grant having been made without the 
knowledge of themselves and their friends, who should 
have been privy to it. From the Exchequer the earls rode 
to the Guildhall, where the citizens, notwithstanding the 
scene so recently witnessed in "Westminster, gave the mal- 
content chiefs an enthusiastic reception. All were agreed 
in regarding the grievances of the nation as enormous, and 
in the necessity of imposing some powerful restraint on the 

* Rymer, ii. 783. Matt. West, ad ann. 129?. The following are the king's 
words as given by Westminster : ' Behold ! I, who being about to expose 
myself to danger for your sakes, do beg of you, if I return, to receive me 
as you now receive me, and I will restore to you all that I have taken from 
vou. And if I do not return, then I beg of you to crown my son as your 
king.' 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 451 

despotic tendencies of the crown. The military array of b °°k iv 

the earls in these proceedings was great ; but the public 

peace was not broken. The men in mail, and the men of 
traffic and handicraft, feudality and citizenship, were at one 
on that day.* 

Edward was soon apprised of these proceedings. But parliament 
his commands to his ministers not to heed the prohibitions statute p% 
of the constable and mareschal were without effect. The non conce* 
discontent expressed by those noblemen was the feeling 
common to all classes, from the highest to the lowest. 
The course of the war, moreover, was not favourable. 
The king- of France was at the head of a force which Edward 
dared not encounter ; nor could he retreat with honour from 
the position he had taken. In this exigency, the council, 
to whose care the kingdom had been committed, summoned 
the earls of Hereford and Norfolk, and a number of prelates 
and barons, to a conference ; this conference was prelimi- 
nary to a parliament ; and by this parliament the following 
important provisions submitted by the conference, were 
enthusiastically adopted as additions to the Magna Charta, 
and the Charter of the Forests. 

' No manner of tax or aid shall either be imposed or 
gathered by us or our heirs, for the future, in our kingdom, 
without the common consent and free will of the arch- 
bishops, bishops, and other prelates, the earls, barons, 
knights, burgesses, and other freemen of this realm. We 
will not take to ourself any corn, wool, hides, or any other 
kind of goods whatsoever, without the consent of the person 
to whom such goods belong. We will not take for the 
future in any name, or on any occasion whatsoever, evil 
toll * on any pack of wool. We will and grant, for us and 
our heirs, that all the clergy and laity of the kingdom shall 
have all their laws, liberties, and customs as freely and 
fully as they ever enjoyed them at any time. And if any- 
thing be enacted or ordained against any article in this 
present writing by us or our ancestors, or by any new cus- 

* Wals. 72. Knighton, 2512. Heming. 117. Westmin. ad arm. 1297. 
•j- A tax of 40s. on every pack of wool exported. 



452 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B chS 4 V ' toms introduced, we will and grant that such customs or 
statutes be for ever null and void. 

' "We do remit also to Humphry de Bohun, earl of Here- 
ford and Essex, constable of England ; Roger Bigod, earl 
of Norfolk, mareschal of England, and other, the earls, 
barons, knights, esquires, and to John de Ferrars, and to 
all others his colleagues and confederates, and also to all 
those who hold 201. lands, either of us in chief or of others 
in our kingdom, who were summoned to go into Flanders 
and did not appear, all manner of rancour and ill-will which 
for the aforesaid causes we might have taken against them ; 
and also all kinds of transgressions which to us or ours may 
have been done, to the making of this present writing. 

' And for the greater security of this matter, we will and 
grant, for us and our heirs, thai all archbishops and bishops 
of England shall for ever in their cathedral churches have 
the present writing read, and shall publicly excommunicate 
there, as well as cause to be excommunicated in the several 
parish churches throughout their diocese, twice in a year, 
all those who shall Beek to weaken the force of these pres- 
ents in any manner whatsoever. In testimony of which we 
have put our seal to this present writing, together with the 
seals of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, and others, 
who of their own accord swore to observe strictly the 
tenor of these presents, in all and every article, to the best 
of their power. And for the due observance of which they 
promised all their aid and advice for ever.'* 

Such is the memorable statute De TdHagio non Con- 
<■< <1< a do. Its great aim, as will be seen, was to give a fuller 
security to the property of the subject. It made the king 
dependent for every branch of revenue, apart from the 
rents of the royal demesne, on the suffrage of parliament 
— and of a parliament consisting of the baronage of Eng- 
land, and of representatives from the commons in county, 
city, and borough. 

Deep was the reluctance of the king to attach his signa- 
ture to this instrument. But his embarrassments in the 
Netherlands were watched by the Scots, who seized the 

* Pari. Hist. i. 45, 46. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 4:53 

moment, after their manner, to make incursions into the book iv. 

' . . Chap. 4. 

northern counties. The prince and his council, moreover, 

had been parties to the framing of this instrument, and 
joined in urging the king to accept it. In that event, the 
clergy and laity were prepared to vote large supplies ; and 
the barons and their followers were ready, either to join 
the king in Flanders, or to compel the Scots to find other 
employment. But an answer was required, in decisive terms, 
by a given day. By that day, after a costly struggle, 
Edward attached his name and seal to the docu- 
ment.* 

The value of this statute must not be viewed as Edward's 
relating simply to the greater security of property. To evade it 
restrict the power of the crown in that direction, was to 
restrict it in every other. Parliament, in becoming the 
guardian of the public purse, became the guardian of the 
public liberty. To control the exchequer, was to have control 
over the sinews both of war and government. To the king 
this was sufficiently clear ; and his majesty gave abundant 
evidence afterwards of an intention to undo if possible all 
that had been done. First, it was rumoured that the king 
spoke of his oath as invalid, from its being exacted from 
him in a foreign land, where he had no authority, and was 
not in possession of his full liberty of action. Next, a suc- 
cession of attempts was made to evade the confirmation of 
the statute after his return to this country. When all these 
expedients had failed, and the statute was at length con- 
firmed as it stood, it was with the addition of a clause touch- 
ing the supposed rights of the crown, which virtually an- 
nulled all that the document had been designed to secure as 
right to the subject. The earls of Hereford and Norfolk 
and their adherents, expressed their amazement and indig- 
nation, and withdrew from court and parliament. 

Edward flattered himself that the citizens of London The Lon- 
would not be found so clear-sighted in these matters as the sistws re ' 
barons. The sheriffs were instructed to convene the Lon- po lcy ' 
doners in the crypt of St. Paul's, and there to read the 

* Matt. West, ad ann. 1297. Heming. 138 et seq. Knight. 2522. Walsing. 
73, 74. Pari. Hist. i. 46. 



454 ENGLISH AJSTD NOKMANS. 

B 8h5 4 V * statute m their hearing. As passage after passage was read, 

the crypt resounded with applause. But when the clause 

at the end came, the scene at once changed. The attempted 
fraud was seen at a glance, and the expressions of disap- 
probation were as loud as the expressions of approval had 

The statute been before. Edward's last move had thus failed. He im- 

law. mediately convened a new parliament, m which Ins assent 

was given to the statute without reservation.* 

Further But even yet, there was duplicity somewhere. The gov- 

precautions " ' *■ " ° 

to secure it. ernment officials knew the law, but, from some cause, pre- 
sumed to ignore it. They acted in many cases as in former 
times. Complaints on this ground in the next parliament 
were bitter. To silence them, the king consented, not only 
to renew his pledge to abide by the provisions of the new 
statute, but, to ensure its better observance, agreed that it 
should be publicly read, together with Magna Charta and 
the Forest Charter, in the sheriff's court, four times in the 
year, and that three knights in each county, to be chosen 
by the freeholders, should be commissioned to punish all 
persons convicted of violating the said premises in any 
way.f 
revM^o'and For the present the king deemed it prudent to dissem- 
perfidy. -^-^ -g^ j^ p m .p 0se to make the parties who had so far 
prevailed against him feel the effects of his displeasure was 
never relinquished. Three years later the Scots were sub- 
dued, his affairs generally became more prosperous, and the 
moment seemed to have come in which to put forth his 
hand as an avenger. The earl of Hereford was dead ; but 
his son was summoned to resign his estates into the hands 
of the king ; and though they were restored, it was on such 
conditions, that they soon afterwards fell to the crown. 
Bohun, the lord mareschal, was humbled and wronged in a 
similar manner, together with Winchelsey, archbishop of Can- 
terbury, and many more, who were charged with having 
been parties to the alleged conspiracy against the king 
while absent in Flanders.:}: All this was done in unblush- 

* Heming. 109-168. Wals. 76. West, ad aim. 1298. 

f Stat. 28 Ed. I. 3. 

% Brady's Complete Hist. iii. 74-76. West, ad ann. 1305. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 455 

ing violation of an oath, solemnly taken, and often re- book iv. 
peated.* 

It is now known, that in 1304, Edward opened a corrc- ^T a *™[ 
spondence with the pope to obtain a formal dispensation £ r a °™ b b is the 
from the pledges by which he had bound himself; and that P°P e - 
the dispensation was granted, though, from causes which 
can now be only matter of conjecture, the instrument was 
never made public. f 

Another measure, which dates from the king's success in infraction 

of the 

Scotland in the same year, was his levying a tallage on all statute. 
his demesne lands and towns without consent of parliament, 
as though the De Tallagio non Concedendo were not in 
existence. His manner of silencing the complaints of the 
barons, in the next parliament, was by telling them that 
they were free to levy a similar tax on the lands and towns 
subject to themselves. Of such a complexion was the 
patriotism of Edward I. — better his barons should be left to 
plunder at will, than that he should not himself be allowed 
that liberty. 

But Edward I. died, and the law which declared that political 
the nation should be in no way taxed without its consent, a land undo!" 
law given in a free parliament, remained on the statute 
book4 On the death of this king, nearly a century had 
passed since the germ of this law found its place for the first 
time in our history, as one of the provisions of Magna 
Charta. But we may say that two great principles — taxa- 
tion solely by authority of parliament, and the representa- 
tion of the commons as essential to the constitution of a par- 
liament, were recognized for all time to come in the reign 
of the first Edward. English liberty, indeed, was nothing 
to that monarch. He ceded no vestige of it willingly. He 
would have crushed it in all its tendencies, had he been 
permitted. But the course of events in England had long 

* Westminster recounts these proceedings as bespeaking clemency, seeing 
nothing of the perfidy ! Archbishop Winchelsey appears to have given special 
umbrage to the king. ' I know the pride of thy heart,' said Edward, ' thy 
rebellion and cunning; for thou hast always acted contentiously towards 
me.' But Dr. Lingard is right in saying, that Englishmen owe hardly less 
to archbishop Winchelsey, and to the earls of Hereford and Norfolk, than 
to archbishop Langton and the barons at Runnymead. — Hist. iii. 353 et seq. 

f Kymer, ii. 9Y2-978. % Stat. 34 Ed. I. 5. 



456 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. been such as to train the people in political knowledge; 

and the two principles above mentioned, which the policy 

of this king had tended to make bo precious, may be said to 
have embodied two of the weighty lessons which the nation 
had now thoroughly learnt. 

With these new ideas, property seems to acquire a new 
Bacredness, and law a new authority. Neither the kin-- of 
England, nor the baronage of England, may henceforth 
touch thf properly or the person of the Englishman except 
according to Law. Tin- law take- precedence of both. 
Both owe to it obedience — all owe to it obedience. Enight 
and baron, burgess and freeholder, Bubject and sovereign, 
have their ground in this respect in common. According 
to maxims which have now become accredited and familiar, 

will is nowhere law, but law is everywhere in the place of 
will. The English yeoman of those days, and many below 
them, thought, ami spoke, and debated concerning these 

maxims. So did the merchants in their guild.-; and so did 

th.' men of handicraft when they gathered about their 

homely hearths, when they met in their local court-. M 

mbled a- fraternities in the manner then common to 
men following the same calling or 'mystery. 5 The educat- 
ing power ->t Buch influences might he Been everywhere. 
'1'.. congregate was to Learn, and there was Bcarcely any 
other way of Learning. Even in the universities, more 
knowledge was obtained from the Lips of living nun than 
from books. And there could he no greater mistake than 

to Suppose, that the people of England in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries, Cared little ahoiit politic-. Concerning 
politics as :t theory or a science they thought little, hut con- 
cerning government a- a matter immediately affecting tleir 
persona] Liberty ami personal gains they were keen observers 
and keen disputants. The question of government was with 
them, more sensibly than with as, a question of profit and 

loss, of life and death. It determined what might or might 
not be accounted as their own ; and what tiny might or might 
not he made to do or to endure. The portly merchants, and 
the crowds of tradesmen and artisans, who made the old arches 
in the crypt of St. Paul's to ring with their acclamations. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 457 

as clause after clause of the statute De Tallagio was read, b ^k iv 

and who so quickly changed their note to that of indigna- 

tion and disgust when the neutralizing clause at the end 
came, were clearly men to whom discussion about such 
questions had long been familiar. So, in part, did the 
political life of the English get nutriment, and develop itself 
in those days. 

Edward I. has been described as the English Justinian. Edward's 
It is a dishonour to the race of our Norman kings that measures, 
the little done by this monarch as a law reformer should 
have sufficed to give him any such reputation. His statute 
of mortmain, and his endeavour to define the province of 
the ecclesiastical as distinguished from the civil courts — of 
which we shall speak in another place — were wise meas- 
ure-.'- The same may be said of the law which prohibited 
the increase of manors.f Much petty tyranny was thus 
checked. The manors of England are now as determined 
at that time. But this is nearly the extent of the praise- 
worthy accomplished by Edward I. as a legislator. His 
law concerning entails was of questionable utility ; ^ and 
the other salutary enactments of his reign were matters 
wrung from his reluctant grasp by an indignant people. 

It should be added, however, that the attempts of this ,i ni]Mal r0 
king to purify the administration of law, and to uphold its forms " 
authority in all cases between man and man were his own 
tree action, and highly commendable. In the tenth year of 
his reign, all the judges, with two exceptions only, were 
found to be grossly corrupt, selling their influence to the 
man offering the heaviest bribe. The delinquents were de- 
prived of their office, and subjected to heavy fines. From 
this time, the judges were sworn to abstain from accepting 
money, or presents of any kind, beyond a breakfast, from 
persons having suits before thcm.§ 

"With such dishonesties in high places, it is hardly sur- i m p r0 vc. 
prising that the country should have been much infested ™ h ? ce 0f 

* West, ad ann. 1280, 1285. Duns. 584. Wikes. 122. Stat. 18 Ed. I. 1. 
Pari. Hist. i. 35, 36. 

+ Stat. 18 Ed. I. 1. % Stat. 13 Ed. I. 2. 

§ Chron. i. Wikes. 118, 119. Duns. 873 et seq. Pari. Hist. i. 37, 
88. 



458 EXGLISn AND NORMANS. 

B Gbaf 4~' AV1 '^ 1 robbers. Bands of such men had their haunts in all 
the forest districts. To check these disorders, all boroughs 
were required to establish watch and ward from Btraset to 
sunrise. It was required also, that the high roads should 
have a Bpace of two hundred feet on either side cleared of 
trees, and of everything thai might favour a sudden assault 
upon the traveller. To ensure the observance of these regu- 
lations, local commissioners were appointed, who became 
the precursors to our modern justices of the peac< 

Edwardn. The reign of Edward II. extends from 1:5117 to 1327. 

—Hen 

] -•■ twenty years give as the history of a king incapable 
of ruling, and of an alternating Btruggle between a sovereign 
content to be governed by favourites, and nobles who are 
not content that he Bhould be in Buch hands. This is the 
political drama on which the eyes of the English people were 
fixed during those years. They Baw the young king, on his 
accession to the throne, devoted to the companionship of 
a favourite named Piers de Gaveston. They Baw in the roy- 
al favourite a Gascon youth of handsome presence, skilled 
in furnishing the weak king with amusement, in casting 
ridicule on his presumed rivals, and in Bowing distrust and 
disaffection between the sovereign and the most powerful 
of his Bubjects. They learn at Length that even the young 
queen, Isabella of France, one of the most beautiful women 
in Europe, is powerless with her husband in comparison 
with this court minion. They note the utterances <>f di 
tent as they become daily more general and more loud. 
They listen to the Latest rumours about certain meetings of 
nobles and their followers at Ware and at Northampton, 
about the barons as having constrained the king to convene 
a parliament, in which grave inquiry will be made into the 
late proceedings of the government. To that parliament 
they Bend their knights and burgesses; and thence the re- 
port comes to them that divers articles of accusation are 
being urged against the favourite; such as that he lias 
abused the king's ear so as to obtain immoderate grants to 
himself; that he has embezzled the treasures of the king- 
dom ; that he has taken the best jewels of the crown to his 

* Stat. 13 Ed. I. 2. 



POLITICAL LIFE EST ENGLAND. 459 

own use ; that, raised as he now is above the most ancient B q^ */ 
nobility of the land, his father had suffered as a traitor, his 
mother had been burnt as a witch, and he had himself been 
banished as implicated in her machinations — machinations 
of the sort which could alone account for his present influ- 
ence over the mind of the king. The expectation is, that 
the power of the favourite, under the weight of such 
charges, must soon come to an end. But the king strug- 
gles hard to save him. He would have the differences 
between himself and the barons settled by arbitration. But 
the fitting men shrink from the responsibility. The barons 
insist that Gaveston shall leave the kingdom, and the report 
now is, that Edward has consented to his banishment. The 
favourite embarks at Bristol. But the king accompanies 
him to that place. The barons soon learn, to their no small 
mortification, that Gaveston has only left England for Ire- 
land, where Edward has made him his representative. 
Such are the political contentions which chafe men's spirits 
at the commencement of this reign.* 

The parliament which secured the banishment of Gaves- Parliament 

1 , . of 1309. 

ton was convened in the spring of 1308 ; another was as- 
sembled in the spring of the following year. In this 
interval, enough had happened to foreshadow the disor- 
ders which would prove inseparable from the rule of 
such a monarch. The commons were full of grievances, 
the lords not less so ; and both were resolved on seeking 
the reformation of abuses, and on doing what might be 
done towards guarding the subject against the mischiefs to 
be apprehended from the sovereign power in hands so little 
entitled to their confidence. 

The commons presented a remonstrance to the king, in Eemon- 
which they complain that clerks had not been appointed, as the com- 

11. • i. •• i i mons. 

in the last reign, to receive their petitions ; that new duties 
had been levied on cloth, wine, and other imports, raising 
the price one-third ; that his majesty's purveyors seized on 
all kinds of provisions at their pleasure, without giving the 
required security for payment ; that the goods taken by the 

* Rymer, iv. 63 et seq. Pari. Hist. i. 5*7, 58. Stowe, Hist. 213. Wals. 
96. 



460 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



officers of the king's household for his use in fairs and mar- 
kets were inordinate, and that the residue was sold by the 
said officers for their own advantage ; and that the coin of 
the realm had been debased so as to have raised the price 
of all commodities. The commons go on to say, that in 
addition to these fiscal grievances, they have a right to com- 
plain of many things which interfered with the due admin- 
istration of the law; of the stewards and maresehals of the 
king's household, who entertained plea.- that did not per- 
tain to them, and exercised their authority in places beyond 
the hound- of their jurisdiction ; of the king himself, who, 
by mean- of writs under the privy -cal, often defrauded 

parties in civil suits of their rights, and afforded even to 
felons the means of escape from the punishment due to their 
crimes ; and of certain barons, who Bel up courts of judica- 
ture at their castle gates without authority, to the dispar- 
agement of the king's courts, and to the great harm of the 
king's Bubjects.* 

The topics of this remonstrance make ns acquainted 
with the notion-, and something more, which possessed the 
minds of the good knights and burgesses, who took to their 
saddles in the springtime of 1309, that they might duly 
make their appearance in parliament, a- representatives of 
the counties and town- of England. On these matters we 

must BUppOSe that they muse a- they travel alone; talk as 
they fall in with each other on the way; and confer more 
formally when gathered in force at the place of meeting. 
Through the articles ..f this petition we -ee into some of the 
evils then prevalent ; and in the tone of the document we may 

discern something concerning the stage of political insight 
and feeling to which the English people generally had then 
attained. The kin-- promised, after some hesitation, that 
the prayer of the petition should he attended to in all its par- 
ticulars. The promise, however, concerning the new duty 
on import.-, was soon forgotten. f 

Gaveston was banished in the summer of 130S. During 
the next twelve months the king endeavoured to add to the 
number of his friends, and at the close of that interval 



Rot. Pari. i. 441. Trynnc's Register, 68. 



f Ibid. 



POLITICAL LIFE EST ENGLAND. 461 

deemed himself strong enough to venture on a recall of the B00K iv. 

° Chap. 4. 

favourite. The re-appearance of Gaveston brought with it 



new signs of disaffection. In two instances the barons 
refused to obey the king's summons to attend him in par- 
liament, on the plea that their persons would not be safe in 
so doing while so much power was in the hands of Gaveston. 
"When it was announced that the favourite had withdrawn 
to a distance, the barons assembled, but appeared, contrary 
to the command of the king, followed by their retainers. 

The first measure of this parliament was to appoint a The com- 
committee which should be empowered to adopt such regu- ordainers. 
lations for the better government, both of the king's house- 
hold and of the nation, as should appear to them expedient. 
This committee has been described as the Committee of 
' Ordainers,' from the ordinances issued -by them for this 
purpose. It consisted of eight prelates, the same number 
of earls, and thirteen barons. It was to cease at the end 
of twelve months, and was not to be drawn into a precedent 
that should be in any way injurious to the rights of the 
crown. This whole proceeding was described as an 
arrangement which had originated in the free choice of 
the sovereign — a statement, we must suppose, to which no 
one gave credence.'- 

The king soon absented himself from London, where the ordinances 
Ordainers held their meetings. lie collected an army in dnincrs. 
the north, was there joined by Gaveston, and then marched 
into Scotland. In the meanwhile, the committee in London 
digested a series, of articles, forty-one in number, designed 
to correct existing abuses, and to guard against their recur- 
rence. These articles included many grievances which the 
king had already promised should cease. The novelties in 
this memorable schedule maybe said to have been confined 
to the clauses which provided that such of the king's pur- 
veyors as should exceed their lawful commission should be 
pursued by hue and cry, and dealt with as robbers ; that 
the wardens of the Cinque Ports, and the governors of any 
foreign land subject to the king, should be chosen by the 
king with the advice of his barons in parliament ; that the 

* Rot. Pari. i. 445. Rymer, iii. 2000 et seq. Pari. Hist. i. 68, 59. 



462 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B P!?^ */' sheriffs of counties should receive their commission under 
tlie great seal, but should he appointed hy the principal 
officers of state, including the four justices of the King's 
Bench; that the king should not lea/oe the kingdom, nor 
declare war, without the consent of his oarons in parlia- 
ment} and that in such case the said barons should make 
provision for the safety of the kingdom. 

These are the provisions in this document which trench 
most on the power of the crown as hitherto exercised. The 
remaining articles of this tendency relate to the conduct of 
the king towards Gaveston and others, who were charged 
with exercising an undue influence over him. All grants 
made to lord Beaumont, and his sister lady Vesey, were 
declared void, and it was required that those persons should 
no more be seen within the limits of the court. The same 
was determined concerning the succession of grants made 
to Gaveston; and, inasmuch as the Baid Tiers Gaveston 

had given evil counsel to the king, had sown seeds of dis- 
trust and alienation between him and his faithful subjects, 
had appropriated large Bums of public money to his own 
ose, had possessed himself of blank charters with the royal 
seal, to fill up and distribute at his pleasure, and had gone 
so far as to form an association of persons sworn to protect 
him against all men — il was required that the said Piers 
Gaveston should he banished, and that the day of his de- 
parture should not be postponed beyond the first day of 
November next. To all these demands Edward found him- 
self obliged to assent. But he did so under a protesl in 
favour of the rights of the crown, which sufficed to show 

that the oath BO taken would he repudiated on the first con- 
venient occasion. - '* 

On the first of November a sorrowful parting took place 
between Edward and Gaveston. Two months afterwards 
the favourite was recalled, and the king issued a proclama- 
tion declaring the innocence of the banished man, and his 
readiness to meet the charges preferred against him. 
Civil war. This proceeding led to civil war. The king, however, 

* Rymer, iii. 337. Rot. Pari. 281. Pari, llitt. i. 59, 60. Walsing. 98, 
99. Rrady's Hist. Ap. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 463 

dared not face the barons, led as they were by his cousin, book iv 

the powerful earl of Lancaster. Gaveston fled for refuge 

to the castle of Scarborough. The fortifications of the place 
were not such as to promise him security. On certain con- 
ditions, he surrendered himself into the hands of his ene- 
mies. From Scarborough he was conducted to Warwick. 
In the castle of that place the barons conferred in regard 
to the fate of their victim. 

Gaveston was not only an accomplished man — he had The fato of 
given proofs of military skill and courage. In the holiday 
passages at arms common in those days, he had triumphed 
over four nobles, one of whom was Lancaster himself. But 
the knight did not bear his faculties meekly. His impru- 
dence kept pace with that of the king. The latter, it was 
clear, could never be separated from this man, nor be pre- 
vented heaping upon him new wealth and honours ; the 
former exasperated his opponents from day to day by his 
ostentations, and by the sarcasms and nicknames which he 
flung at them. To the earl of Pembroke he gave the name 
of ' Joseph the Jew ; ' the earl of Gloucester was ' the 
cuckold's bird ; ' the earl of "Warwick was ' the black dog 
of the wood ; ' and Lancaster was ' the old hog.' In the 
council at Warwick Castle, one speaker urged that the life 
of the prisoner should be spared ; no unreasonable counsel, 
bearing in mind the promise made on his surrender. But 
the ' black dog ' had vowed that the man who gave hini 
that soubriquet should some day ' feel his teeth ; ' and a 
voice responded to the voice which counselled mercy, ' You 
have caught the fox ; to let him go will be to have to hunt 
him again.' The voice of the last speaker prevailed. It 
was decided, accordingly, that one of the late ordinances, 
said to be applicable to his case, should be acted upon, and 
that Gaveston should die. The unhappy man cast himself 
at the feet of Lancaster, and implored earnestly for his 
life ; but it was in vain. His head was the price of his 
follies. This happened in July. In the following October 
a sort of reconciliation took place between the king and the 
barons.* 

* Rym. iii. 281 et seq. Wals. 98-101. Pari. Hist. i. 59. 60, Brady, Hist. 
iii. ubi supra. 



464 



ENGLISH AND N0EMANS. 



Tlic Spen- 
cers — the 

again in 



B cni^ *!' During the next nine years, the whole country was 
much harassed by wars with the Scots and the Irish, which 
at length brought in famine and pestilence. Law and order 
came almost to an end. 

Some while after the death of Gaveston, his place in the 
affections of the king was gradually supplied by a youth 
named Hugh Spencer. The new favourite was of an 
ancient family, but shared in the jealousy and resentment 
incurred by his predecessor. In 1321, he attempted to take 
possession of an estate in one of the March districts, in a 
manlier which seemed to menace the liberties claimed by 
those who dwelt on such lands. The lords of the Marches 
in the neighbour! d summoned their retainers, and enter- 
ing the estates of Hugh Spencer, and of his lather, plun- 
dered and destroyed wherever they came. Lancaster and 
his faction were induced to join the insurgents, and the two 
parties pledged themselves to remain together until the 

banishment of the Spencers, father and son, should be 
secured. In this object they were successful — successful by 
pure intimidation. The only offence of the elder Spencer 
appears to have been that he was the father of the younger. 
Both \vere absenl from the country on the king's service 
when this movement against them took place, and both 

were condemned without a hearing.* 

It happened at this juncture, that the queen intimated 
her intention t<> pass a night at the castle of Ledes, on her 
way from Canterbury to London. But the lady Bradles- 
mere, in possession of the castle, refused her admission; 
winch led to an encounter between her retainers and the 
garrison. f 

These deeds of turbulence and insult on the part of the 
barons' faction .-pread distrusl and alarm. Reactionary 
feeling became prevalent. The king soon found himself in 
a position to take the field against his enemies; and the 
of Borough- battle of Boroughbridge gave the most powerful of them 
into his hands. The great earl of Lancaster, the possessor 

* Rot. Pari. iii. 361 ct scq. Pari. Hist, i. 70, 71. Wals. 113, 114. A 
translation of the written impeachment preferred against them, from the old 
French, is given in the Pari. Hist. j. 67-70. 

f Pari. Hist. i. 114, 115. Rymer, 897, 898. 



The buttlo 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 465 

of five earldoms, perished by decapitation. Fourteen B00K IV 

bannerets were hanged, drawn, and quartered ; fourteen 

knights suffered the same punishment. Many more were 
subjected to mitigated penalties. The licence and severity 
of the baron's party brought these calamities upon them. 
But the king, by these sanguinary proceedings, prepared 
the way for that revulsion in the opposite direction which 
ended in his imprisonment, his deposition, and his death.* 

Immediately after the victory at Boroughbridge, Edward Parliament 
assembled a parliament, in which all that had been done nancesre-" 
by the ' Ordainers ' contrary to the alleged rights of the s 
crown in past time, was rescinded. It was enacted, also, 
that such changes should not be attempted in future by 
means of any such delegation ; but that all laws affecting 
' the estate of the crown or of the people ' should be the act 
of the king, and of the prelates, earls, barons, and com- 
monalty assembled in parliament. f The Spencers were 
recalled ; but it was only that the younger, emulating the 
imprudence of Gaveston, should share in his fate, and con- 
tribute to the fall of his sovereign, and the ruin of his own 
family. 

Edward II. was neither a vicious man nor an arbitrary Deposition 
sovereign. The evils which came upon himself and upon ° 
his kingdom during his reign, were the result mainly of his 
narrow self-will — of the kind of obstinacy which is often 
allied with weakness. His propensity to give his heart to 
some one person, to the neglect of his subjects generally, 
and even of his queen, exhibited a mixture of incapacity 
and perverseness which became at length unendurable. 
His barons were haughty and turbulent ; but his conduct 
was such as to offend the pride he should have soothed, to 
provoke the turbulence he should have allayed. It was 
manifest that his personal gratifications were the one object 
of his affections ; and to this frivolous selfishness in the king, 
we have to trace the signal want of loyalty in his subjects, 
and of affection even in his own family. 

* Knighton, 2540. Wals. 115, 116. Rym. 907-940. Leland, Coll. ii. 464 
et seq. 

f Pari. Hist. i. 76. 

Vol. I.— 30 



466 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. The parliament which deposed Edward II. recognised 
Ed^d" ms son P rmce Edward as his successor. The prince was 
11L fourteen years of age on his accession. During the minor- 

ity of the young king, Isabella, the queen mother, and 
Roger, lord Mortimer, were in virtual possession of the sov- 
ereignty. It is not to be doubted that the conduct of the 
late kins: towards Isabella had been such as to wound her 
womanly pride, and could hardly have failed to alienate 
her affections. Towards the close of the last reign the 
queen had taken her place openly on the side of the dis- 
affected ; and her intimacy with Mortimer, the leader of the 
insurgents, though innocent for a while, became in the end 
a scandal to the court and the nation. At the expiration 
of three years the young king began to feel his thraldom. 
The jealous nobles were quite ready to aid him in bringing 
it to a close. 
Fan of Mot- In the antumn of 1330, a parliament was convened in 
Nottingham. Measures were there taken to seize the person 
of Mortimer. The charges brought against him were, that 
lie had assumed functions which the parliament had 
assigned to a committee; that the late earl of Kent, uncle 
to the king, had been executed, through his influence, 
without just cause ; that he had subjected the king to the 
watching8 of spies ; and, above all, that he had removed the 
late king from Kenilworth, the residence selected for him 
by the estates of the realm, and had then caused him to be 
put to death. Mortimer Buffered as a traitor; and Isabella 
spent the remaining twenty-seven years of her life under a 
respectful oversight in the castle of Risings.* 

During a reign of fifty years Edward III. summoned no 
less than seventy parliaments. His wars in Scotland and 
in France compelled him, as we have elsewhere seen, to 
make frequent application for aid to his subjects ; and one 
effect of this course of events was, to give a more matured 
and settled form to the constitution and the usages of par- 
liament, 
settled The time had now irrevocably passed in which a parlia- 

ofpariia- ment could be supposed to be constituted of less than the 



nient. 



* Pari. Hist. i. 81-87. 



POLITICAL LIFE LN ENGLAND. 467 

three estates — the clergy, the lords, and the commons. B 2^ 1 ^' 

These estates assembled and deliberated apart. The clergy 

were chiefly occupied with questions relating to the church ; 
the commons with measures affecting industry and trade ; 
while the lords took a somewhat higher range, and were the 
great authority, next to the crown, in all secular legislation. 
The clergy convened with each parliament consisted of the 
prelates, and of others representing the chapters, the reli- 
gious orders, and the inferior clergy.* The lords consisted 
of barons who sat by their own right as such ; and of 
barons by writ, who were dependent for their right to be 
present on a special summons from the crown. It is prob- 
able that the latter class was restricted to men holding 
lands by a baronial tenure. The barons by writ became few 
before the close of the reign of Edward III., and cease to 
exist soon afterwards. Bannerets appear to have been oc- 
casionally summoned to the House of Lords until a some- 
what later period. f The commons reckoned seventy-four 
knights as the representatives of counties, and a number of 
burgesses, which varied according to exigencies, or the place 
of meeting. These two classes now formed one assembly, 
separate from the lords and from the clergy.^ It is to this 
union between the representatives of landholders, or the 
gentry, in counties, and the representatives of trade in towns, 

* ' It is now, perhaps scarcely known by many persons not unversed in the 
constitution of their country, that, besides the bishops and baronial abbots, the 
inferior clergy were regularly summoned to every Parliament. In the writ of 
summons to a bishop, he is still directed to cause the dean of his cathedral church, 
the archdeacon of his diocese, .and one proctor from the chapter of the former, 
and two from the body of his clergy, to attend with him at the place of meeting.' 
— Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. 194, 195. The summons to parliament is readily 
distinguishable from a summons to convocation, as the convocations were provin- 
cial. This representation of the commons among the clergy may be traced as 
far back as 1255, and was one, probably, of the many causes which served to 
prepare the way for a house of commons for the laity. 

f Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. 187, 188. 

% Rot. Pari. ii. 64, 66, 69, 104. Lingard, Hist. iv. 164. The fact that 
every record of grants made in parliament, from the time it is made to consist 
of three estates, is the record of grants made by each estate separately, warrants 
the presumption that the commons were wont to assemble as a body distinct both 
from the lords and the clergy from the beginning. It is certain that this was 
the usage in the early part of the reign of Edward III. The prelates, however, 
sat as lords in parliament ; but the estate of the clergy is said to have abstained 
from voting on secular questions. — Lingard, iv. 157, 158. In the last year of 
Edward III. the commons pray that no tax may be laid on certain commodities 
without ' assent of the Prelates, dukes, earls, barons, and commons.' — Pari. 
Hist. i. 146. 



468 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



BOOK IV. 
Chap. 4. 



Usage of 
parliament 

— growing 
power of 

the com- 



and to the fact that these two classes of representatives 
formed one separate assembly, that we have in great part 
to attribute the permanence and the growing power which 
has characterized this branch of our legislature. The wealth 
represented by the burgesses gave them weight in that 
form ; and the higher rank and intelligence of their col- 
leagues from the counties, gave to their joint action weight 
of another kind. By degrees the middle element blended 
itself almost equally with the peerage above and with the 
commonalty below. "We should add, that the expenses of 
both classes — of what we should call county members and bor- 
ough members- -were defrayed, according to law, by their 
constituents. The burgess received two shillings a day, the 
knight four — that is, at the rate of something more than 
two and four pounds a day of onr money.* 

The process of legislation was Bimple. Of the lords and 
commons, either might propose a law, but the assent of the 
other, and of the crown, was necessary t<> it.- becoming law. 
It was not probable that the lower house would attempt to 
Legislate for the npper. But as little was it permitted to 
the upper house to legislate for the lower. In the nine- 
teenth year of his reign, when in the zenith of his power, 
Edward called on every landholder to supply him with 
archers, horsemen, or money, according to his means. The 
commons petitioned the king to withdraw this demand, on 
the ground that it had not been made with their sanction. 
The king answered that it had been made with the sanction 
of the lords, and that his necessities had rendered such a 
supply indispensable. But such reasoning was not deemed 
satisfactory. The common- persisted in their protest against 
being bound by crown or peerage, or by both conjoined, 
without their own consent. Edward promised that the 
measure should not be construed as a precedent. But even 
that was insufficient, and, in the end, a statute- was passed 
which declared, that in all time to come, ordinances so 
issued should be deemed contrary to the reasonable liberty 
of the subject. f Too often the redress promised was not ren- 

* Pot. Pari. ii. 258, 441., 444. The usual time for the meeting of parlia- 
ments in those days was eight in the morning. — Ibid. 316. 

\ Rot. Pari. ii. 160 et seq. See also the petition of the commons in the 
parliament of 1348.— Pari. Hint. i. 116, 117. 'The course of proceedings in 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 469 

dered ; and the law issued differed materially from that to B ° 0K IV 

•> Chap. 4. 

which the king had given his assent. But against these 

shameless' frauds, a stringent provision was made by the 
commons in the twenty-seventh year of this reign.* 

We have seen the reluctance with which the first Ed- 
ward passed the law which made all taxation to be abso- 
lutely dependent on the consent of parliament. The third 
Edward was not much more reconciled in heart to that 
statute than the first. But if Edward III. resorted at times 
to forced loans, and illegal taxes, it was always under the 
plea of great necessity ; and the validity of the law was ad- 
mitted, while reasons for some exceptional neglect of it were 
urged. More than once, the king was obliged to recede 
from attempts of this nature, and the discontent and resist- 
tance called forth by such dangerous irregularities sufficed 
to render them of comparatively rare occurrence.! 

The tenths and fifteenths, and other grants in parliament Tenthg and 
similarly designated, were a species of property tax. They fi^ 1111115 - 
were money payments, which came into the place of per- 
sonal or military service. In the first instance, they were 
determined by the value of every man's moveables, but 
extended subsequently to his entire property. In the 
course of this reign, the inquisitorial conduct of the govern- 
ment officers became so offensive to the people, that the 
custom obtained of allowing towns and counties to corn- 
parliament, from the commencement at least of Edward III.'s reign, was, that 
the commons presented petitions, which the lords by themselves, or with the 
assistance of the council, having duly considered, the sanction of the king was 
given or withheld.' — Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. 161. The commons grew to be 
more and more solicitous to uphold this usage in regard to money bills ; but in 
regard to other bills, it was not a uniform custom in succeeding times. — Rot. 
Pari. iii. 611. 

* Rot. Pari. ii. 257. 

f The rolls of parliament, for the 21st and 22nd years of Edward III., teem 
with these pleas of necessity on the part of the crown ; and with protests against 
any form of taxation under such pretexts on the part of the commons. In these 
contests the scale turns more and more on the side of the commons. — Pari. Hist. 
i. ubi supra. Hallam, iii. 62-69. The following is the answer of Edward III. to 
the petition from his last parliament on this subject : ' As to the clause that no 
charge be laid upon the people without the commons' consent, the king is not 
at all willing to do it without great necessity, and for the defence of the realm, 
and where he may do it with reason. And as to the clause that impositions 
be not laid upon their wools without consent of the prelates, dukes, earls, 
barons, and other people of the commons of the realm, there is a statute 
already made which the king wills should stand in force.' — Pari. Hist. i. 
145. 



470 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



Tonnage 

and 

poundage 



book iv. pound with the government for a fixed sum, and then to 

Ciiap. 4. r ° 

raise the amount among themselves." 

From this reign, certain duties levied by the king at the 
seaports, became known by the name of tonnage and 
poundage. By this custom, the crown obtained two shil- 
lings on every tun of wine imported, and sixpence on every 
pound of commodities imported or exported. Tonnage and 
poundage, was at first a sort of voluntary grant, made by 
the principal seaports to aid the king in sustaining a navy 
for the protection of trade, or at Least to enable him to pay 
for the use of such ships as might be pressed into his ser- 
vice. It soon came to be a grant made anew by every new 
parliament, and retained its ancient designation long after 
its proceeds had ceased to 1"' applied exclusively to their 
ancient oses. These duties, were in addition to the heavy 
tax <»n wools, wool fells, and hides. Attempts were made by 
the crown to increasi duties of the latter kind without con- 
senl of parliament ; and sometimes to impose duties on ex- 
ports without such consent, under the plea that the increase 
in price In such instance- tell Oil the consumer in other 
countries — as though high prices could never be supposed to 
act as impediments upon Bales. But the commons were 
vigilant, and insisted on their right to control taxation in 
such forms, as in others. f 

It has appeared, that to secure the passing of good laws 
was only one step in the direction of good government — to 
ensure the just administration of such laws was the next 
difficulty. The judges, and the officers in the different 
courts, were expected to make those courts serviceable to 
the exchequer — and we have seen that they were not less 
intent to derive from them supplies for their own coffers. In 
this reign, the salaries of the judges were raised, that they 
might be under less temptation to take bribes.:}: The she- 

* Rot. Pari. ii. 447, 448. 

f Rot. Pari. ii. 104, 160, 161, 166, 210, 273, 310, 317, 366. 

I We have seen the check given to the corruption of the judges by Ed- 
ward I. In the 20th year of Edward III. it was deemed necessary to issue an 
ordinance to the following effect : ' That all the king's justices throughout his 
dominions, should renounce and utterly forbear taking any pensions, fees, or 
any sort of gratuities which before they used to receive, so well from lords 
temporal and spiritual as others, that, as their hands being free from corruption, 



Further ju- 
dicial IV- 
forms. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 471 

riffs, and other responsible officers, were required to be men b o°k x 4 y 

of property, and to be chosen annually, that so aggrieved per- 

sons might find it less difficult to obtain compensation from 
the authors of their grievances. The powers of the justices 
of the peace, moreover, were greatly enlarged ; and private 
wars were more effectually discountenanced.* These are 
among the good works of the English House of Commons 
under Edward III. The House of Lords was more occupied 
with judicial than with fiscal questions, and in settling dis- 
putes among their own order, than in exposing, and provid- 
ing against the grievances of the nation. They gave their 
ready assent, however, for the most part, to the liberal peti- 
tions of the commons, and exercised great powers as the 
high judicial authority of the realm, determining the mean- 
ing of the law where the judges declined giving a decision, 
and correcting their decision when deemed erroneous. 

There was one statute of this period in which the lords Th e i a ^ of 

- 1 treason dc- 

were especially interested. This was the statute intended flned - 
to determine more accurately the offences which should be 
adjudged as treason. The penalties of treason were the 
most terrible known to the law, while the law itself in this 
case was the most unsettled. Obnoxious persons were liable 
to be convicted of this heaviest of crimes, on the ground of 
acts which gave no warrant to such an accusation, except 
as construed in ways the most disengenuous and dangerous. 
But if this latitude in the law was deemed an evil by the 
subject, it was accounted an advantage by the crown. Not 
only was the fence about loyalty supposed to be the greater, 
but the traitor forfeited his estates, and all such estates went 
to the king. In the twenty-fourth year of Edward III., 
the commons, stimulated probably by the lords, took up 
this subject with great earnestness, and persisted in their 
suit until a new statute was obtained. This law declared 
that treason should attach in future to seven offences only 
— especially to such as should be convicted, by their peers, 
or by a competent jury, of compassing or imagining the 

justice might be more impartially and uprightly administered.' — Pari. Hist. i. 
111. 

* Statutes, 1st Ed. III. 14, 16 ; 2nd, 6, 1 ; 3rd, 4, 14th, 1, 8 ; 20th, 4, 5, 
6 ; 28th, V. 



472 



ENGLISH AND NOKMANS. 



B c^5 4 Y ' death °f tne king, the queen, or their eldest son ; of levying 
war within the realm, or taking part with the king's ene- 
mies ; of uttering counterfeit coin ; of murdering certain 
great officers of state, or a judge in the discharge of his 
duty.* 

Another significant change is due to the patriotism of 
the commons of England during this reign. It was provided 
that all pleadings in courts of law should in future be in 
English. This had long been the usage in some measure, 
but chiefly in the lower courts. From this time those most 
interested in knowing how a case was presented, whether in 
civil or criminal causes, became fully cognizant of all that 
was said in relation to it. This law belongs to the thirty- 
fifth year of Edward III. ; and when the next parliament 
assembled, the opening address was for the first time in 
English. f 

In this change we may see clearly, that we have reached 
the point of revolution in English history in which the 
Anglo-Saxon element becomes again decidedly ascendant. 
Tliis law, in fact, required that all schoolmasters should 
teach their scholars to construe in English, and not, as hith- 
erto, in French.^ The great landholders are still of Nor- 
man descent, and retain their familiarity, for the most part, 
with the French language. But the bulk of the people are 
English. The gentry are receiving daily more and more 
of an infusion from the English ; and in becoming powerful 
enough to determine the language of the country, not only 
in common life, but in schools, and courts, and parliaments, 
the men of English blood have become powerful enough to 
give the impress of their character to almost everything 
beside 

From this time to the accession of the house of Tudor, 
the constitutional history of England presents many new 
facts, but they are nearly all the development of old princi- 
ples. The reign of Richard II., extending from 1377 to 
1399, added considerably to the precedents of the past in 
favour of popular liberty. So, through all the changes 
which followed, many of them apparently the most unfa- 



Liborties 
gained dur- 
ing this 
period. 



* Rot. Pari. ii. 239. 



f Pari. Hist. i. 127, 128. 



% Ibid. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 4:73 

vourable, the liberties acquired under Edward III. are ^j^ 1 / - 

retained, made more clear and certain, and in some respects 

enlarged. One precedent follows another in favour of the 
right of the commons in making their grants of supplies 
dependent on the redress of grievances ; insisting that such 
redress when promised shall be faithfully rendered ; in 
securing that laws passed shall be recorded without corrup- 
tion or mutilation ; in declaring that no law shall be enact- 
ed, and no tax levied, without their consent ; in asserting 
that to them it pertains to inspect and control the public 
expenditure, and to impeach the ministers of the crown for 
misconduct ; and in claiming on behalf of their members, 
full liberty of speech, and the right, moreover, to originate 
all money bills. Nor are there wanting instances in which 
large views are announced touching the authority of parlia- 
ment in relation to the possessions of the clergy and the law 
of succession.* In these facts we find nearly all the pop- 
ular principles since developed in our history ; and these 
may all be traced, more or less clearly, to about the mid- 
dle of the fourteenth century. Practice did much to give 
permanence and authority to these principles, but the 
constitution for the preservation of which so memorable a 
struggle was sustained, partly under the Tudors, but espe- 
cially under the Stuarts, was the constitution realized by the 
English House of Commons in the days of Edward III. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that what was thus done 0n the rein- 
by our kings and nobles, and by our knights and burgesses, tweeiTfaw 
sets forth the history merely of a legislature, or of a govern- an peop °" 
ment, teaching us little concerning the political life of the 
people. These great facts do indeed lie on the surface of 
the past, but they tell us, with no little certainty and clear- 
ness, what was beneath. The debates and the law-makings 
of these parties may teach us little directly concerning the 
community at large, but they teach us much indirectly. In 
the ordinances and laws of these ancient commoners, we 
may see the embodied thoughts and passions of those in 
whose behalf they took their long and weary journeys, and 

* Rot. Pari. ii. 64 et seq. Pari. Hist. i. 34-157. Reeves's History of 
English Law, i. c. ix.-xiv. Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. 124 et seq. 



474 



EXGLISn A2SD NORMALS. 



book it. sacrificed much precious time 

Chap. 4. 



Condition 
of the peo- 
ple— the 
villein. 



Villeins by 
tenure. 



Kiso of vil- 
leins into 
freemen. 



The grievances enumerated 
by them, were the facts and experiences to be found, more 
or Less, in all the farms and markets, in all the factories and 
seaports, and very largely at the firesides, of the then living 
people. Still, it is well to look below this surface, and to 
descend closely to what is beneath, as far as we may. 

We have no reason to suppose that the Normans intro- 
duced any portion of the serf population found under their 
sway in England. The class in that condition after the Con- 
quest, were such as had been in that condition before that 
event, or the descendants of such. Not a few of these were 
of British origin, and had clung to the soil under Saxon, 
Dane, and Norman. Under the early Norman kings the 
condition of this class was very low. According to Glanvil, 
even in the time of Henry II. the villein of the lowest class, 
could call nothing his own, neither his tenement, his land, 
nor his movables. J Lis lord's claim, both upon him and 
his, was absolute : and his children were born into the same 
condition.* Still, he was not really a slave, lie might be 
punished or imprisoned by his lord; but murder, mutila- 
tion, or rape, on the part of a superior towards his villein, 
exposed him to an indictment at the king's suit; and in 
relation to all other men the villein might claim the com- 
mon protection of the law.f 

But while sonic were villeins in the absolute sense above 
stated, others were described as villeins, because holding 
lands on condition of rendering certain personal services, in 
the manner of the villeins, in lieu of rent. The land was 
held in this case <>n what was accounted a villein tenure, 
but the man himself was not a villein.^ This soccage tenure, 
as before mentioned, was in reality the tenure of free men. 

How the serf, or the villein proper, as he is sometimes 
called, should ever have become free may seem a mystery, 
seeing that whatever he might present as the price of his 
freedom must have been already the property of his owner. 
But this has been in part explained. The lord, it appears, 
did not always need the entire labour of his servile depend- 



* Glanvil, lib. v. c. 5. 

\ Ibid. 172. Bracton, lib. ii. 



f Littleton, § 181, 189, 190, 194. 
{v. c. 28. Hallam, iii. 257. 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 475 

ents, and often allowed them to hire themselves for their B <? 0K * v 

Chap. 4. 

surplus time to their own advantage. Haughty nobles 

valued the gratitude and affection of their labourers, as 
secured by such treatment, much more than the gains that 
might have been realized by a more rapacious policy. By 
degrees, the amount of service required became fixed, and 
in some instances a copy of the agreement so entered into 
was furnished. In this manner the right of copyhold land, 
which answered very much to the ' bocland ' held under 
the Saxon kings, had its origin ; and in the time of Edward 
III. it had become law, that the lord could not seize the 
land of <- such tenants so long as the holder paid his rent in 
the shape of the stipulated amount of service. Many of the 
lower grade of villeins became freemen through favour of 
the clergy to whom they happened to be subject ; or through 
the influence of the clergy with their lords. But a greater 
number probably became independent, as before stated, by 
becoming fugitives, when to follow them from one part of 
the country to another was difficult, and when the law was 
known to be upon the whole in their favour, by accounting 
them free after a certain interval of unmolested residence 
elsewhere. In the reign of Eichard II. the parliament com- 
plained that villeins fled from the country to the cities and 
boroughs, and that the citizens and burgesses gave them 
protection, in defiance of their lords when laying claim to 
them.* 

We have already seen, that twenty years after the ac- Great 
cession of Edward III. the handicraft and the husbandry ^7il T ° f 
of the country had come to be carried on, for much the 
greater part, by free labourers. The dearth and pestilence 
of 1348 had so diminished the labouring population, that 
very stringent laws were then issued to compel the artisan 
and the peasant to work for a certain rate of wages — laws 
which clearly imply that the labouring classes were then to 
a great extent free to sell their labour to the highest bidder. 
Some traces of villenage indeed continue in our history so 
late as the age of Elizabeth ; but from the middle of the 

* Rot. Pari. Hi. 294-296. Hallam, iii. 258-269. Eden, State of the 
Poor. 



476 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



B c£5 ™- fourteenth century, the indications of its existence are faint, 
and seem to become more and more faint with each gene- 
ration. 



Effect of 
progress in 
skilled la- 
bour. 



The Eng- 
lish aristo- 
cracy not 
a privileged 

class. 



So, by degrees, a numerous free peasantry grew up, 
taking their place abreast with the freemen in towns. From 
this condition many made their way into the class next 
above them, consisting of substantial yeomen and traders ; 
and from these classes taken together, came those men of the 
bow and the battle-axe, who, under the guidance of our 
Norman chivalry, made the English name so world-famous 
in the days of our Edwards and Henrys. But the tide 
which shifted the strata beneath in this manner, did so 
under a pressure from beyond itself, and tended towards 
results only partially foreseen. These new conditions of the 
more occupied classes came from new ideas, and could 
hardly fail to be fruitful of other ideas not less new. Men 
had claimed these new conditions, in the main, because tiny 
had come to feel them to be in themselves fitting and right, 
and they had been ceded, in the main, tor the same reason. 
In these facts we have signs of the political lite of the people 
as it then existed. It is growing, and it will grow. 

It was to the honour of the nobility and gentry of Eng- 
land, that they could never claim any exemption from the 
burdens of the state, or any real suspension of the law in 
their favour, by virtue of their rank. In this respect, the 
ground on which they stood was really more noble than that 
occupied by the noblesse of France, and other Continental 
nations. To this honourable peculiarity we have in part to 
attribute the fact, that we hear so little offend between the 
aristocracy and the commonalty in those times.* It gave 
to both classes a common interest in the law to which they 
were in common subject, and contributed probably fully 
as much as the limitations imposed on the power of the 
crown, to give permanence to our system of liberty. But 

* A remarkable instance of this good feeling between the two houses wo 
have in the parliament of the fifth year of Richard II. The commons requested 
the advice of the lords on a matter before them ; but respect for the accustomed 
independence of the Lower House led their lordships to reply, that the ancient 
form of parliament had been for the commons to report their own opinion to the 
lords and the king, and not the contrary, and on this ground the request was no^ 
complied with. — Hot. Pari. iii. 100. 



POLITICAL LIFE EST ENGLAND. 477 

if our nobles were less distinguished than the same order of B q^ l £' 

men in most countries by political privileges, they were 

men of large wealth, and shown in all the splendour natur- 
ally attendant on the man of large possessions. The con- 
trast between this baronial magnificence and the poverty 
and villeinage elsewhere, might be harmless so long as 
political thought lay dormant. But it was otherwise when 
such thought became active. The night — a long night — 
had passed, the waking time had come ; and what the 
thoughts were which that awakening had brought with it, 
in the case of the industrious middle class, and of the labour- 
ing class below them, history has in part disclosed to us. 

It was no secret to this growing middle class, that from Growth of 

& indepen- 

their head and their hand, for the most part, came the <^nce. 
wealth and splendour of the powerful class above them. 
They thus learnt to attemper the respect due to that class 
with a becoming recollection of the respect due to them- 
selves. They knew they had duties, but they knew also 
that they had rights. In the presence of the proudest they 
were not often abashed. The distance between the burgess 
and the knight, the yeoman and the baron, might be great ; 
but the ground which severed them from each other had 
long been greatly diminishing, and was felt to be by no 
means so considerable as that which they occupied in 
common. The popular poetry, and the private history, of 
the time, place these men of clear head and strong hand 
before us, as men of free utterance and of erect bearing, yet 
as serious withal, whenever the matter in hand was of a 
nature to demand seriousness. 

Such were the yeomen and burghers who sent knights 
and burgesses to parliament. It was under such guidance, 
in great part, that these English commoners learnt to insist 
in that assembly, that the Englishman should not be taxed 
without his consent, and to insist on much beside of that 
nature, of which mention has been made. 

But it is observable, that much as the House of Com- Loose con- 
mons was valued by this class, the question of the suffrage suffrage. 
did not hold the place with them that has been assigned to 
it in later times. County members were deputed to their 



478 



ENGLISH A2JD NORMALS. 



B cuf P 4 V ' sery i ce by tne loose suffrage of the gathering in the county 

court. As we have seen, it is not until the reign of Henry 

YI. that the right of voting was limited hy the forty-shilling 
freehold.* Borough members are said to be sent by the 
community ; but there is reason to believe that the choice 
was often left to the borough corporation.f The cause of 
this course of affairs seems to have been, that there was very 
little difference of opinion among commoners in those days 
concerning what was needing to be done. Let the counties 
and the boroughs send their men, and, in general, the feel- 
ing, would appear to have been, that there was no room to 
fear the competency of the house to do the work expected 
from it. The first signs of jealousy in relation to the suff- 
rage were called forth by the conduct of certain sheriffs, who 
Learnt to make a bad use of the power entrusted to them. 
Defective and corrupt returns were frequently made by 
them, sometimes to gratify their own prejudice or caprice, 
and Bometimes in obedience to an unconstitutional influ- 
ence exerted by the crown.;}: 

The high comparative freedom of the commonalty in 
those times may be inferred from the fact, that next to their 
complaints against illegal taxation, their great grievance- 
related to the custom of purveyance. When the king trav- 
elled, his attendants often amounted to several hundreds, 
and his purveyors Lodged the company, and seized on vehi- 
cle-, horses, and provisions at pleasure. The law, indeed, 
required that for all this there should be reasonable com- 
pensation, but that compensation was often difficult to 
obtain. The payment was rarely adequate, often long 
delayed, and sometimes never made at all. To protect them- 
selves against the consequences of these occasional visits of 
royalty, the commons obtained a law in the reign of Edward 

* Statutes, 8th Hen. VI. c. 7. 

J See pp. 495, 496. Some of the boroughs, as is well known, prayed to be 
exempt from the privilege of sending members on the score of expense. It is 
worthy of remark that during part of the reign of Edward III. and the next four 
reigns, the boroughs of Lancashire are uniformly returned by the sheriff as too 
poor to send members. — 4 Prynne, 317. 

% In the fifth year of Richard II. a law was passed intended to ensure 
a more regular and faithful discharge of the sheriff's duty in this respect. But 
there is reason to think that the poorer and more distant boroughs were never 
more than partially represented even when they received the writ. 



The pur- 
veying 

grievance 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 479 

III. which said, that the right of purveyance should not book rv. 

extend beyond the king, the queen, and the heir-apparent ; 

that even these should provide their own horses and vehi- 
cles ; that the local authorities should see to the lodgment 
of the king's attendants, and should decide on all questions 
in regard to charge for accommodation and provision ; that 
small sums should be paid immediately ; that the credit in 
no case should extend beyond four months ; and that the 
servants of the king infringing this law, as the manner of 
some had been, should be accounted felons, and be dealt 
with as such. By this enactment the grievance was greatly 
diminished, though it did not cease to be felt as such during 
many generations. The irritations produced by this custom 
were no doubt a greater mischief than the losses which it 
occasioned ; but the sufferings of a people which felt this 
to be their great grievance could not have been very 
weighty.* 

It is probable that the suffering of the lowest class — the Growth of 
town artisan and the peasant labourer — was not greater in content.' ' s * 
those days than will be found in the same classes in much 
later times. But the contrast in that day between the con- 
dition of the high and the low was much stronger, while the 
ignorance of the latter class often disqualified them for 
receiving with sobriety the new ideas regarding the com- 
mon origin of the race, and the common relation of all men 
to right, and to the Allrighteous, which were then breaking 
upon them so forcibly from parliaments and pulpits. The 
maxims of equality announced by Magna Charta, and which 
had been iterated with so much constancy and emphasis in 
political and parliamentary struggles since ; and the sacred- 
ness which had been imparted to those maxims by the sanc- 
tion which religion itself had conferred on them, had evi- 
dently caused them to take strong possession of the mind 
of the class feeling itself to be the lowest, and accounting 

* See the references to a number of statutes on this subject in the time of 
Edward III.— Pari. Hist. i. 149-156. 

In the twentieth year of this reign, ' some complaints having been made to 
the king and parliament against the purveyors for the king's household, who 
under colour of their commission had taken up all manner of provisions without 
ever paying for them, the king caused a strict inquiry to be made, and some of 
the most notorious offenders were hanged, and others condemned to pay great 
fines. ' — Ibid. iii. 



4S0 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. itself the most down-trodden. If it be well, said the Chart- 

tUAP. 4. 

ist of that day, that men should be equal in the Bight of 

God and the law, why should their equality end there I 
Why should the labour vt' the poor be so cheap, seeing the 
rich can well afford to pay a better price for it i Why 
should there be a truer of villenage left among us, Beeing 
the powerful have no ueed of villenage I Yea, why should 
not the time come for a redistribution of wealth, seeing it 
has long Bince drifted away from the many, and become 
enormous in the hand- of a few I Had not the old Hebrews 
their year of jubilee, when the slave ceased to 1"' a slave, 
and the unequal were unequal no Longer I It' we are all of 
one Btock, why are we not one brotherhood \ It' we are all 
of the Bame family, why are we not in the same condition I 
[f equality was the rule in the first and the best times, why 
Bhould it not be the rule now I Such are some of the ques- 
tions which w.rc seething in the rude mass of mind in this 
country in the middle of the fourteenth century, and which 
prompted the great outbreak associated in the history of 
that century with the name of Walter the Tyler. The well- 
known distich on the lips of the commonalty of that time 
- us at once this phase of thinking: — 

When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who \\;i> then the gentleman I 

in.Mirrcr- All our histories relate, that BOOn after the accession of 

w'lt'Tyior. Richard II. t he en il >arra->meiits of the govemmenl Led to 

the imposition of a poll-tax — consisting of a certain sum to 
be paid by every adult person, of cither sex, according to 
condition ; that this tax was in great part farmed by certain 

collector-, ; that the discontent excited by this measure was 

great, especially among the lower classes; thai the men 
of Essex, led by a baker of Fobbing, were the first to 
oppose the collectors by force; that the attempts made to 
suppress this disorder only multiplied insurgents, and caused 
the destruction of a grand jury who were finding indict- 
ments against some of the leaders; that the rudeness of a 
collector towards the daughter of one "Walter, a ' tyler' at 
Dartford, provoked the father to strike the ruffian a blow 



POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



481 



with his hammer, of which he instantly expired ; that Wat B0 °5™ 
suddenly found himself at the head of a multitude of people 
possessed with the idea of compelling the government to 
abandon this obnoxious tax, and to rule the poor commons 
more justly and humanely ; that this multitude took pos- 
session of London, acquitted themselves for a while peace- 
ably and orderly, but soon grew unmanageable, and com- 
mitted great atrocities ; that Walworth the mayor, in a 
burst of passion, during a conference in Sniithfield, gave 
Wat his death blow ; and that after that, his followers were 
dispersed, and many of them hanged. 

That this outbreak seemed to be a failure— worse than 
a failure— does not detract from its significance. It is a 
mistake to suppose that great effects ever come from small 
causes. Causes arc always as great as their effects, and 
greater. The last apparent cause may seem to be trivial, 
but it has come in the train of predisposing causes which 
were adequate to the result. It is a spark only that seems 
to do the mischief ; but the spark would have been harm- 
less if the combustible material had not been there. The 
explosion in this case came, not from the baker at Fobbing, 
not from the ' tyler 5 in Dartford, but from the discontents 
which were everywhere ready to burst into a flame. Such gignifl _ 
feeling was the "feeling existing in nearly every state of Sei** 
Europe. France and Flanders had been recently exposed 
to excesses of the kind which now broke upon England. 
Governments had everywhere become more costly; and, 
through corruption or inexperience, were apparently most 
improvident ; while the intelligence diffused among the peo- 
ple by a more prosperous industry, had disqualified them 
for a ready acquiescence in such a course of things. The 
result was a strong antagonism in many quarters between 
the governing and the governed. Let the last remains of 
villenage come to an end ; let the rent for land in future 
be a fixed money payment, not a personal service ; and let 
trade in markets and fairs be free from vexatious tolls and 
imposts— these were the first demands of the insurgents 
under Wat Tyler. If we may credit their enemies, their 
subsequent projects were in many respects as foolish as 
Vol. I.— 31 



482 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. their deeds were reprehensible ; but the belief that public 
^— affairs were badly managed, and that they might and 
ought to be otherwise managed, was not the less strong 
because the power to articulate that conviction clearly and 
wisely was wanting. From that conviction came the insur- 
rection ; and to that conviction, more intelligently directed in 
other men, and in other circumstances, this land owes the 
changes which have made it the home of a free people for 
so many centuries. The grievances complained of by "Wat 
Tyler and his followers were real, the great misfortune of 
these people — a misfortune by no means uncommon — was, 
that they did not know how to seek the best ends by the 
right means.* 

* Sir HughSegrave, the lord treasurer, addressing parliament at its opening, 
on Nov. 3rd, 1881, said, ' among other tiling that in the late rebellion the king 
had been forced t" grant the insurgents letters patent, under the great seal, en- 
franchising to a considerable extent 1 1 1 < » — ■ - who were only bond tenants ami vil- 
leins (if the realm ; for which the king, knowing them to lie against law, desires 
them to seek a remedy, and to provide for the confirmation or the revocation 
thereof.' Richard professed himself willing to do as he had promised, with the 

consent of parliament The lords and commons resolve unani usly : 'That all 

grants of liberties and manumission to the said villeins and bond-tenants, ob- 
tained by force, are in disinherison of them the lords and commons, and to the 
destruction of tin- realm, and therefore null and void.' This House of Commons, 

however, complained of many abuses of the government as having led to the late 

commotions, ' and presented many petitions on grievances, and for a general grace 
and pardon, Stating that, considering the rancour of the people, they neither 
dare nor will grant any tallage. 1 At length a subsidy was obtained, hut 
not without the 'grace and pardon.' — Pari, ami Councils >>f Eng. Ill, 
145. 

Some of my readers will he interested in knowing that Simon de Montfort, 
who gave us our first House of Commons, was really a man of the sort that Laud 
and Strafford would have branded as a Puritan ; and that archbishop Langton, 
who did bo much towards procuring the Great Charter for Englishmen, was the 
author of that fine church hymn, Peru Creator Spirittu. Hut these facts have 
become known through publications which ha e only recently appeared. So 
religion and liberty have been helpers of each other from times long past in 
our history. — Sec MonumetUa Franciscana, [ntrod, xciv. ; and Spicilegium 
Solesmcnse, Domino J. B. Pitra. British Quarterly Review, vol. xiv. 568. 



CHAPTER V. 

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND, FROM THE DEATH OF 
EXNG JOHN TO THE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. 

IN general, ambition must be wise to secure its objects — book iv. 
. .,, , ....,, Chap. 5. 
wiser still to perpetuate the acquisitions it has made. 

i . t Culminat- 

W here success has been great, it is easy to believe it may ing point in 
be greater. Hence the excess which brings reaction. Inno- of the papal 

° ° power. 

cent III. was one of the most powerful and sagacious of the 
pontiffs. But his course towards England brought the papal 
authority to its culmination in our history. The vassalage 
which he imposed on king John, and the manner in which 
he opposed himself to the feeling of the nation in condemn- 
ing the Great Charter, and in excommunicating its authors, 
suggested lessons which were not to be forgotten. In his 
person, the see of Rome had affected to be the arbiter of all 
rights, whether as set forth by sovereign or subject. Sov- 
ereign and subject came to feci that this monstrous priest-rule 
was an error and a mischief, and that as such it should be re- 
sisted. But resistance on this ground, which nearly all men 
were ready to approve, prepared the way for resistance on 
other grounds, where the justice of the proceeding was not 
so obvious. The idea of resistance, even in that quarter, 
became familiar to the mind of the highest and the lowest. 
It came to be a matter beyond doubt that the infallibility 
of the pope must have its limits ; and so the question, the 
dangerous question, came up — what are those limits ? In the 
struggle of parties, those on whose side the thunders of the 
Vatican were wielded, were disposed to assign to them a great 
authority ; while those to whom they were opposed, were 
found to be capable of treating them very lightly. By de- 



484 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B cnu> l J.' g rees ? a H parties learn to regard these fulrninations as instru 
ments of rule possessing little strength except as derived 
from the ignorance and superstition of the age. 
The love of The successors of Innocent III. often appealed to his 
l " kes l f th maxmis 5 Du t t ne time t° ac t upon them for purposes of am- 
rJwe°r bition had passed. Still, they had their uses. They served 
to give an appearance of moderation and plausibility to the 
interferences of the papacy in matters deemed properly 
ecclesiastical : — and it became a tacit maxim with the court 
of Rome, to be content with less power than formerly, if the 
power retained should only prove to be sufficient to ensure a 
satisfactory revenue. So a habit of low rapacity came into 
the place of the higher passion. The ecclesiastical history 
of England from this time to the commencement of the 
Reformation, consists — in so far as the relation of this coun- 
try to Rome is concerned — in a constant struggle on the 
part of the popes to enrich themselves, as far as possible, 
from tlir revenues of the English church ; and on the part 
of the crown, of the lay patrons, and of the clergy gene- 
rally, to protect themselves against this war of spoliation. 
"V :isc of The "rounds on which these pretensions rested have been 

the papacy o ST 

imtio'na| he stated, viz. — that the pope is the head of the universal 
churches, church ; that as such the dignity of himself and of his court 
must be sustained ; that the means to this end must come 
from the revenues of the churches owning his authority; 
that it pertains to him to take cognizance of the revenue 
of the order of men specially subject to him, and to judge 
as to the best method of applying it to its proper uses ; and 
that the contributions required to be paid into his treasury, 
were not greater than were necessary to make suitable pro- 
vision lor himself, and for the persons whose services were 
indispensable to the administration of the affairs entrusted 
to him." 

The reply made was — that no one questioned the supreme 
authority vested in the pontiff in respect to matters ecclesi- 
astical and spiritual ; that no good Christian could wish to 
see the spiritual head of Christendom deficient in regard to 
the means of upholding his proper dignity, and rewarding 

* See pp. 347-350. 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 485 

reasonably the persons occupied in affairs falling properly B 9^ 5 V 

beneath his oversight ; but, from some cause, it was only 

too manifest, that the papal influence was always present 
where the question of money might be raised ; that, in fact, 
the popes were surrounded by men whose avarice was insa- 
tiable ; and that to enrich these persons, and others depend- 
ing on them, the pontiffs had shown themselves prepared to 
lay their hands on the revenues of the church upon a scale 
which threatened to transfer the greater part of the wealth 
of the country into the hands of foreigners — men who often 
failed to render the slightest service in return for the emol- 
uments so bestowed upon them. 

The expedients by which the popes contrived to acquire p e ter's 
the virtual command of so much wealth were various. The pence ' 
contribution which bore the name of ' Peter's pence ' was 
the least considerable of their gains from this country. This 
payment was as old as the Anglo-Saxon times. It was 
designed at first, to constitute a fund for the relief of Eng- 
lish pilgrims. It is said to have consisted at that time of a 
tax of one penny on every house of a certain value. But it 
soon came to be a payment in a fixed sum — and it remained 
the same sum for centuries, uninfluenced by the increase of 
houses or of wealth. The annual payment was about 2001. 
The popes flattered themselves that it would be possible to 
return to the old custom of rating the householders, and to 
realize a much larger amount by that means. But the 
attempt was resisted, and the resistance prevailed. 

One demand of the Roman see, particularly odious to King John's 

•1-i-iT tribute 

the people, was more honoured than it should have been money. 
for more than a century in our history. We refer to the 
annual payment of a thousand marks, promised for himself 
and his successors by king John, when that monarch con- 
sented to receive his kingdom as a fief from the hands of 
Innocent III. It is true, this payment was by no means 
regularly made. It was dispensed with when the favour of 
his holiness might be dispensed with, and it was observed 
when the observance was felt from special circumstances to 
be expedient. In 1366 Edward III. had been a defaulter in 
this respect for more than thirty years. In that year Urban 



sors. 



486 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B cnip ¥' ^' ^ enian< ied the payment of these arrears. The king laid 

the menacing letter of the pope before his parliament, and 

the lords, the commons, and the clergy, were unanimous in 
repudiating the papal claim. From that time we hear no 
more of the ' census,' as it -was called ; and with the census 
fell the more harmless payment of Peter's pence.* 

But the two great sources of wealth to the papal see still 
remained untouched — these consisted in the custom of ' pro- 
visors,' and in the claim on the ' first-fruits ' of vacant bene- 
fices. 

of h provL tom ^ ie nominal appointment to a vacant bishopric rested 
with the monks or chapters in each cathedral. But, for :i 
while, the approval of the archbishop was necessary to give 
validity to every election of a bishop. By degrees, both 
chapters and metropolitans were virtually superseded, and 
the real choice in such eases came to be a sort of alternate 
compact between the crown and the papacy. The king 
was sometimes greatly annoyed on finding that the pope 
took exception to the man of Ins choice ; but in general our 
monarchs appear to have been less offended by this sort of 
interference than their subjects. It was felt, that any at- 
tempt to ignore the pretension of the Roman see in such 
cases, backed, as it would be sure to be, by the chapters, 
must lead to endless discussion ; and it came at length to be 
pretty well understood, that concession on one side to-day, 
might be expected to ensnre concession on the other side to- 
morrow. The pontiffs insisted that it pertained to them to 
make ' provision ' — hence the technical term ' provisors ' — 
for all vacant bishoprics. But the persons so provided, were 
in some cases commended by the king, and approved by 
the pope ; in others, they were chosen by the pope, and 
accepted by the king ; and in all cases the new bishop was 
required to confess that his temporalities were received 
from the crown, and not from the papacy. It will be seen, 
however, that the field of patronage thus open to the see of 
Rome was enormous. In the distribution of episcopal wealth 
and power, the authority of the pope was placed fully 
abreast with that of crowned heads, from one end of Chris- 

* Colliers Eccles. Hist. i. 560. 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 487 

tendom to the other. The division of the spoil was not the book iv 

r > Chap. 5. 

same in all places, or at all times ; but the partnership was 

a reality, though of a sort which left each partner to en- 
croach on the profits of the other by almost any expedient 
that might be deemed favourable to that end. 

But if the pope might provide in this manner for the 
highest cures in the church — why not for the subordinate ? 
The question was natural ; it soon arose ; and, in fact, the 
popular complaint at this time had reference much less to 
what was done in relation to bishoprics, than to the manner 
in which even the lower offices and emoluments of the 
church were made to pass into the hands of foreigners. In 
this department the evil roused the jealousy and indignation 
of the entire class of lay patrons, and the people at large 
saw its effects brought home to their own doors. The crown 
was usually powerful enough to compete with the papacy in 
relation to bishoprics, but the antagonism between lay 
patrons and the pontiffs, was generally by no means an 
antagonism between equals. 

Nor was it enough that the custom of ' provisors ' ena- The first . 
bled these parties to reward their servants and dependents, fruits ' 
by raising them to places of authority and opulence. By 
means of another custom, the first year's income from the 
larger benefices, in the case of persons so promoted, passed 
to the papal treasury. This is the branch of revenue which 
bore the .name of ' first-fruits.' Gregory the Great had de- 
nounced all such payments as simony. But the voluntary 
offering made by an ecclesiastic entering upon a benefice in 
his time, had come to be a regular and definite tax in the 
thirteenth century ; and the payment in such cases, instead 
of being made to the bishop of the diocese, was often made 
to the pope. By degrees, the popes learnt to assert a claim 
on the first-fruits of all vacant livings. But this was a pre- 
tension which it was felt could not be prudently urged 
except under the plea of special need, and, even then, only 
within certain limits, in respect to time and territory. 
Clement Y. made a demand of this kind on the English 
church for two years ; John XXII. for three years. Licence 
was also often granted to particular bishops to exact the 



488 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



BOOK IV. 
Chap. 5. 



Usage of 
eornmen- 
dams — 
peneral cor- 
ruptness. 



How eeclc- 
Btostloa] 
diplomacy 
was ma- 
naged. 



first-fruits, for some special reasons, from all livings that 
should become vacant in their province during certain years 
ensuing. 

But these were all crooked expedients. The government 
based upon them was not natural. Corruption could not 
exist in such forms without diffusing itself further, and in 
fact it was found everywhere.* Men were introduced to 
vacant livings by what was called ' commendam' — that is, 
were commended as fit persons to hold the cure until the 
person designed to occupy it permanently should be ap- 
pointed. But, under various pretences, these commendam 
appointments were often made to continue for years, some- 
times for a whole lifetime. The election of an abbot fur- 
nished the same occasion for papal interference. Appeals 
from authorities in this country to the authority of Home, 
arose from grounds innumerable, and in no quarter, if the 
opinion common to the age may be credited, was bribery so 
all-pervading and dominant as in the papal court. In 
Rome, according to the current language of the time, every- 
thing might be obtained by money, nothing without it.f 

( >n occasions, the popes proceeded so far as to demand 
a rated contribution from the entire movables of the kinff- 
dom. On the goods of the clergy such a claim was often 
made. An incident from the time of Henry III. will serve 
to illustrate this point, and some others, comprehended in 
the politico-ecclesiastical machinery of this period. In 
1228, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, died. The monks 
of Canterbury obtained permission from the king to choose 
a successor. Their choice fell on one of their own order, 

* Water Reynolds, who was called to the see of Canterbury in the early part 
of the fourteenth century, returned from Rome empowered by the pope to exer- 
cise all the rights pertaining to the prelates within the province of Canterbury, 
in their stead, for three years, and to select one preferment for himself out of 
every cathedral church. He was also authorized to remit all offences committed 
within the last hundred days, if duly confessed ; to restore one hundred disorder- 
ly persons to communion ; and to absolve two hundred men from the sin of hav- 
ing laid violent hands on the persons of the clergy. He was further declared 
competent, in the name of the pope, to qualify a hundred youths of uncanonical 
age for holding benefices with the cure of souls. — Wilkins, ii. 483, 484. Walter 
is said to have been rich, and to have paid a high price for the ecclesiastical 
wares with which he was thus laden, and which were of course sold to the 
highest bidder. What happened in his case, happened, we must suppose, not 
unfrequently. 

f Wendover, a.d. 1226. M. Faris, a.d. 1236, 1247, 1253. 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAOT). 489 

named "Walter de Hemisham. But the king took exception B ( ° ] ^ ™' 

to this decision. The bishops, suffragans to Canterbury 

also demurred, on the ground that their opinion had not 
been taken. Walter appealed from the king, and from the 
bishops, to the pontiff. The king sent his envoys to sus- 
tain his suit in the papal court. The pope had his reasons 
for affecting at first to favour the suit of Walter. The Eng- 
lish ambassadors felt the alarm it was intended they should 
feel. They assured the pope and his ministers, that they 
were not insensible to the financial difficulties which the 
war in Germany had entailed on his holiness ; but, that, 
were this suit only terminated to the satisfaction of their 
royal master, they could venture to promise that the contri- 
bution of a tenth should be made to the papal exchequer 
from all the movables of England and Ireland. The pon- 
tiff now declared the election of Walter void. But he at 
the same time professed himself greatly displeased with the 
monks at Canterbury for the course they had taken, so 
much so, that it was imperative upon him to punish them, 
and this he stated he should do by superseding their func- 
tion, and appointing the next archbishop himself. This 
filled the English ambassadors with new alarm. The pro- 
motion of some tool of the papacy to the see of Canterbury, 
might lead to grave mischiefs. It was now urged that the 
pontiff should pause in these proceedings until further in- 
structions should be obtained from England. In these in- 
structions, the king urged that Eichard, chancellor of the 
diocese of Lincoln, might be raised to the primacy — adding, 
that, should the pope approve this choice, the promised 
tenth should be paid. The pope did approve ; the papal 
legate came to England for the tenth ; the case was laid 
before the English parliament ; the laity refused to be bound 
by the king's promise ; the clergy, after some clays' hesita- 
tion, submitted to the impost ; and the rigour with which 
it was exacted called forth loud expressions of indignation. 
Ealph, earl of Chester, warned the collectors not to appear 
on his domain, and in such terms as made his warning 
effectual.* 

* Wendover, a.d. 1228, 1229. M. Paris, 348-362.' Wykes, 41. 



490 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



BOOK IV. 
Chap. 5. 

Protest of 
the bishop 
of Lincoln. 



Collectors 
of the papal 
revenue — 
hated by 
the people. 



Measures of 
parliament 
relating to 
them. 



This narrative may be taken as a fair sample of the net- 
work of rival pretension and intrigue which constituted the 
history of the English church in its relation to the papacy 
during the three centuries which preceded the Reformation. 
Innocent IV. wrote to Robert Grostete, the celebrated 
bishop of Lincoln, requiring him to induct a child, nephew 
to the pontiff, into a vacant living. In his reply, the bishop 
was so bold as to denounce the mandate as more fit to have 
come from Antichrist, or from Lucifer himself, than from 
the successor of the apostles. The bishop knew, however, 
while he condemned this- proceeding in such terms, that 
such things were common ; and in his latest recorded words 
— words uttered in the near prospect of death — he described 
tlic court <>t* Rome as sunk in avarice, as capable <>f all sorts 
of simony and rapine, as the slave of luxury and libertinism, 
and as employed in corrupting the sovereigns of Europe 
down to its own level, in place of raising them to the purity 
of the Gospel.* 

The papal officers engaged in conducting the financial 
affairs of the court of Rome in England in the thirteenth 
century are said to have been more numerous, and better 
organized, than the agents of the king's government; and 
the amount annually transmitted to Rome from all sources, 
is said to have been greater than that raised for the crown. 
So odious, accordingly, were these officers in the eyes of the 
people generally, as to he liable to every sort of insult, to 
Open assault, and, in some cases, to the loss of life. Com- 
plaints were made again and again to the court in whose 
cause these penalties were incurred, and in the remon- 
strances which followed, the English were described as 
showing themselves, by such conduct, to be more impious 
than the heathen persecutors of the faithful in the early 
ages of the church.f 

But these officers, and their proceedings, were scarcely 
more obnoxious to the people than to the parliament. In 
the last parliament of Edward I. severe measures Mere taken 
to check all encroachments of this description. An Italian 
priest named Testa, who was at the head of the pope's 



* Matthew Paris, a.d. 1253. 



KELTGIOTTS LIFE EST ENGLAND. 491 

revenue department in this country, was made to appear b °°k iv. 

before the two houses of parliament ; was publicly censured ; 

was forbidden to proceed further with his exactions ; and 
was even commanded to return moneys in his possession, for 
the king's use. An act was at the same time passed, which 
became known as the first act against ' provisors.' It for- 
bad, under severe penalties, the bringing of any papal 'pro- 
vision,' or any document whatever, from the papal court, 
into this kingdom, the publication of which might be in 
any way inconsistent with the rights of the English crown, 
or of those subject to it.* Under Edward II. this law was 
not a dead letter. The pope deputed two prelates to at- 
tempt a reconciliation between that prince and his queen 
Isabella. The two bishops had sent dispatches before them, 
stating that they should come without letters or instruments 
of any kind that could be used to the prejudice of the king 
or of his people. But the constable of Dover was instructed 
to meet the bishops on their landing, and to remind them in 
the most distinct and formal manner, of the penalties they 
would incur should they prove to be the bearers, or should 
they hereafter attempt to execute, any order, to the injury 
of the king, his land, or his subjects, f 

In the thirty-fifth year of Edward II. complaint on this J; *^™. 
subject was renewed, and new measures were taken. In the ",Xr h Ed- nt 
parliament of 13-13, ' the commons of England made great ward IIL 
complaint of the provisions and reservations coming from 
the court of Rome ; whereby the pope took up beforehand 
the future vacancies of ecclesiastical dignities for aliens, 
and such as had nothing to do within this realm. They 
demonstrated to the king the manifold inconveniences ensu- 
ing thereby — as the decay of hospitality, the transporting 
of the treasure of the realm to the king's mortal enemies, 
the discovering of the secrets of the kingdom, and the utter 
discouraging, disabling, and impoverishing of scholars, 
natives of the land. Among other instances they showed how 
the pope had secretly granted to two new cardinals sundry 
livings within the realm of England, and particularly to the 
cardinal of Perigort above 10,000 marks in yearly collections.' 

* Rot Pari 219 et seq. \ Rymer, iv. 206. 



492 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B ch°ak5 V " ^he commoners pray that a remedy may be found for mis- 
chiefs to which they could not, and would not, any longer 
submit ; and if it should be said that the abuse did not 
admit of correction, they pray the king's help ' to expel the 
papal power out of the realm.' 

The king commended the consideration of the grievance 
to the two houses. By the parliament, the provisions of 
the statute of Edward I. were reiterated, and made more 
stringent, the substance of the declaration of the lords and 
commons being, that no rescript from the court of Rome 
should be in itself of the slightest legal value in the realm 
of England ; and that all persons convicted of introducing, 
receiving, or attempting to act on such instruments, should 
be subject to the penalty of forfeiture, and be otherwise 
dealt with according to the king's pleasure. On this occa- 
sion, the lord.- and the commons wrote a joint letter to his 
holiness, Btating their case, and indicating, in very decisive 
terms, their expectations at his hands. 'Forasmuch,' say 
they, 'most holy father, as you cannot well attain to the knowl- 
edge of divers errors and abuses which have crept in among 
us, and may not be aide to understand the customs and cir- 
cumstances of countries remote from you, except as yon 
may be informed by others, we, who have a full intelligence 
of all error.- and abuses within this realm, have thought tit 
to make known the same to your holiness — and especially 
of the divers reservations, provisions, and collations which 
by your apostolic predecessors of the church of Rome, and 
by you also in your time, most holy father, have been 
granted, and now more illegally than heretofore, to divers 
persons, men of other nations, some of them our professed 
enemies, having little or no knowledge of our language, or of 
the customs of those whom they should teach and govern, 
to the peril of many souls, the great neglect of the service 
of God, the decay of alms, hospitality, and devotion, and 
the ruin of churches, causing charity to wax cold, the good 
and honest natives of the country to fail of promotion, 
the cure of souls to be disregarded, the pious zeal of the 
people to be depressed, the poor scholars of the land to bo 
unrewarded, and the treasure of this realm to be exported in 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 493 

a manner contrary to the intention of those from whose book iv. 
pious beneficence that treasure is obtained. All which — — ■' 
errors, abuses, and scandals, most holy father, we neither 
can nor ought any longer to suffer or endure. Wherefore 
we do most humbly require that the said scandals, abuses, 
and errors, may of your great prudence be thoroughly con- 
sidered, and that such reservations, provisions, and colla- 
tions may be utterly repealed ; that such practices be hence- 
forth unknown among us ; that so the said benefices, edifices, 
offices, and rights, may in future be supplied, occupied, and 
governed by our countrymen. May it further please your 
holiness to signify to us by your letters, without delay, what 
your pleasure is touching this lawful request and demand ; 
that we may diligently do our part towards the correction 
of the enormities above specified.' * 

The effect of this plain-spoken and significant epistle 
does not appear to have been all that its authors thought 
they had a right to expect. The parliament of the next 
year, taking the matter more thoroughly into its own hands, 
made the penalty of violating their late statute to be abju- 
ration of the realm, outlawry, or perpetual imprisonment. 
Seven years later, the two houses pushed their legislation 
on this subject still further; and in 1353, declared the man 
liable to the forfeiture of all his lands and goods, and to im- 
prisonment at the king's will, who should presume to carry 
any cause to a foreign court which pertained of right to the 
king's court — the foreign court specially intended in this 
case being the court of Rome. This vexed affair continued 
to occupy the attention of parliament at intervals to 
the close of the reign of Edward III. The issue towards 
the close of that period was a sort of compromise between 
the king and Gregory IX., which was far from being satis- 
factory to either lords or commons. f 

Many causes contributed to this perpetual embroilment, Effect of 
and to the bitterness by which it was characterized on the dencoof tho 
part of our forefathers. Among the most conspicuous of Avignon— 
these causes was the forced residence of the popes in France, 

* Rot. Pari. ii. 144, 155. Barnes's Edward III. 

f Rymer, vii. 83 et seq. Rot. Pari. ii. 337 et seq. Statutes of the Realm. 



49i ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B g°K X 5 V - followed, as it was, by the papal schism. In the early part 

of the fourteenth century, Philip the Fair, of France, as the 

result of some passionate disagreements with the see of 
Rome, removed the papal court to Avignon. By this 
policy, Philip succeeded in assigning the office itself to 
Frenchmen. This exile of the popes from Rome lasted sev- 
enty years, and, in the language of the Italians, was the 
Babylonish captivity of the papacy. Clement V. ; John 
XXH; Benedict XII.; Clement VI. ; Innocent VII. ; 
Urban V.j and Gregory IX. — all succeeded each other at 
Avignon, and all were Frenchmen. The cardinals, more- 
over, as might be expected, were mostly of that nation. 
Thus the papacy was virtually in the hands of France, 
while France had come to be regarded as the great enemy 
of England. In the eyes of Englishmen at that time, the 
court at Avignon and the court at Paris were one; while 
the creatures and adherents of the papacy in this country, 
from their being to a large extent Frenchmen, or Italians 
who had become resident in France, were naturally regarded 

as doing the work of .-pies, and as enriching the chief enemy 
of the king and kingdom by all their arts of spoliation. The 
Avignon popes, moreover, were not men to abate these 
natural causes of disaffection by their personal influence. 
Mosheim speaks of them as men who k having no other end 
in view than the mere acquisition of riches, excited a gene- 
ral hatred against the Roman see, and thereby greatly 

weakened the papal empire, which had been visibly on the 
decline since the time of Boniface. 5 
Ami ,,f When the captivity ended, the schism began. In 1378, 

in the pa- on the death of Gregory XI. the cardinals assembled to 
choose a successor. But the populace of Rome, aware that 
three-fourths of the cardinals were still Frenchmen, and 
indignant that the tiara had been so long awarded to eccle- 
siastics of that nation, assembled in great numbers about 
the place of meeting, and by threats induced the cardinals 
to choose an Italian. The object of their choice was Bar- 
tholomew de Pregnano, bishop of Bari, who assumed the 
title of Urban VI. But some of the leading cardinals retired 
from Home soon afterwards, and at Fondi, a city in the 



paoy. 



RELIGIOUS LITE IN ENGLAND. 495 

Neapolitan territory, they elected the cardinal of Geneva B0 ^, *£' 

in the place of the archbishop of Bari, and this rival pope 

assumed the name of Clement VII. The plea urged in sup- 
port of this proceeding was, that the former election had 
been the result of intimidation. France, and her allies — in- 
cluding Spain, Sicily, and Cyprus — gave their adhesion to 
Clement ; England and the rest of Europe, proclaimed 
themselves Urbanists. As Europe was then divided in its 
judgment concerning these rival pontiffs, so the question 
between them has remained an undecided question to this 
day. During the next half century the church had two, 
sometimes three, heads at the same time, each busy in his 
plottings, and in thundering all sorts of anathemas against 
the other. 

The history of the Avignon popes showed that the sup- 
posed representative of Deity on earth might become a pris- 
oner in the hands of one of the crowned heads of Christendom, 
in place of ruling as a sovereign independently of all such 
rulers, and above them all. The schism was a still deeper 
shock to the opinion and feeling of the age. With men of 
sense, it might well seem easier to account priestly infallibility 
a dream, than to regard it as a quality that might be competed 
for by two or three claimants at a time. The presence of the 
papal court in the once quiet city of Avignon, converted it 
into the haunt and home of every abomination ; and the more 
northern nations could judge of the virtues which followed in 
the track of the chief pastor of the church, without crossing 
the Alps to acquire that kind of knowledge. Furthermore, 
as this change of home brought with it both weakness and 
poverty, it furnished new pleas on the side of greater artifice 
with a view to greater exactions. The thunders which the 
rival popes hurled at each other, were the natural emblems 
of the wars and the rumours of wars with which their con- 
tentions had filled all Europe. So both parties became 
known by their fruits, fruits which bespoke the presence 
of the wolf, it was said, rather than of the shepherd. 

Such was the political machinery of the ecclesiastical Retrospect 

^»-n • -i i • » n -i — \tivrn in 

system ot Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, revolutions. 
and such are some of the more potent influences then in 



496 ENGLISH AMI NOEMANS. 

^Su^ 1 !' action upon it — to what issue did it tend? In attempting 
to answer this question it behoves us to bear in mind that 
depraved men rarely cease to be depraved men. Such in- 
stances occur, but they are exceptional. But if a self-re- 
formed man is a phenomenon rarely seen, still less may we 
hope to see a community or a corporation become self-puri- 
fied. In the fourteenth century all things seem to point to 
reform or ruin. But there was room to fear that reform 
would be long resisted, even at the hazard of the ruin. 
When do the crafty learn to be ingenuous ? "When do the 
avaricious learn to eschew the lust of gain ? What will not 
an individual do, still more what will not corporate bodies 
do, rather than submit to such self-crucifixion ? It is no 
marvel that Wyeliffe, and IIuss, and Jerome should give 
signs of the coming change. But as little marvellous is it, 
to those who look beneath the surface, that the course of 
this change should have been so unequal and so slow, and 
that to the last it should have been so limited. It is a law 
of Providence, that change in bodies should be slow when 
the body is great. Kor is it less a law that what the great 
heart of humanity lias been long constructing, it must be long 
in taking to pieces, and in casting utterly away. Revolu- 
tions, like creation, have their laws — laws which determine 
their time, and speed, and mode, and result. Good men 
would fain be fast workers, but Providence is ever schooling 
them into two great lessons — to work and to wait. It is not 
always remembered, that were the quicker production of 
good possible, the quicker production of evil would 
be possible ; that to extrude from humanity the tenden- 
cies which give permanence to the bad, would be to 
leave little ground for permanence to the contrary of the 
bad. Mind has its laws of opposite forces, in common 
with matter ; and the power of habit, so far as our experi- 
ence extends, cannot exist for good, without existing also 
for the not-good. Did men change their religion easily, 
we might expect them to change it often — much too often. 

Distinction In this chapter, we have seen, so far, something of the 

between the 

hierarchy religious complexion of the times as presented in the upper 
pe»pie. stratum of society, where the chief actors are popes and 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 497 

princes, ambitious churchmen and the more wealthy among B ^^ Y' 

the laity. Of course in connexion with this strife about the 

distribution of church offices and church revenues, something 
much more religious existed even in that level of society. 
But the laymen and churchmen, the women and the men, 
in such connexions, who possessed a truly religious spirit, 
come but rarely in sight, and are but little known to his- 
tory. Beneath this upper stratum, however, there was a 
middle, and a lower, and what is to be found there ? 

To find the lowest grade in the population of the thir- condition 

, -11 of tenant 

teenth century we must look to quarters in the largest towns andia- 

d x ° bourer in 

and cities. In the country, the baron knew his tenants and the counties 

•* ' in the thir- 

villeins, and could not dispense with their services. The teenth cen- 
relation between these parties were comparatively under- 
stood and settled. Each needed service from the other, and 
the service needed was not to be expected from any other 
quarter. While the ties which linked the feudal lord to his 
dependents were of this nature, those which linked the 
religious houses to their numerous tenantry and labourers 
were still more intimate. Servile, accordingly, in many 
respects, as the condition of the cultivators of the soil may 
have been, their position was such on the whole as to secure 
them an oversight from their superiors, which was favour- 
able, in many ways, to their comfort, intelligence, and inde- 
pendence. In this manner, in agricultural districts, the sta- 
bility of things with the upper classes extended itself to the 
lower. Times might be better or worse, but the lord and 
his servant shared them together. 

It was otherwise, however, in towns. In such places, Citypopu . 
the crowd was the greatest, and the isolation was the great- ^twr" 
est. Every man there was expected to be more self-reliant \ e ^ th C0D " 
than in the country, and he became so, but not always to 
his advantage. Men who knew how to use this liberty, 
becoming industrious, self-governed, virtuous, rose above 
the operative class elsewhere in intelligence, and in familiar- 
ity with home enjoyments. Men who abused this liberty, 
becoming idle and vicious, suffered the penalty of their 
ways, with none to pity or reclaim them. It thus came to 
pass, that the town populations of those times consisted of 
Vol. I.— 32 



498 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



Chap. 5. 



book iv. two classes, the well-conducted and well-to-do ; and the 
ill-conducted, who were huddled together in filth, disease, 
and misery. In regard to religion, the first class was much 
more sceptical on such matters than is now generally sup- 
posed ; while the second soon sank down very far in igno- 
rance, superstition, and heathenism. The Crusades had 
done much to enlarge and liberalize the ideas of men. The 
effect of those enterprises had not been so much to settle as 
to disturb the faith of Christendom. It was seen that infi- 
dels could be virtuous and brave, no less than Christians. 
Everywhere a tendency toward discussion had grown up. 
New demands were thus made on the clergy. If the scep- 
tical were to be satisfied, that would require strong prac- 
tical intelligence ; and if the degraded and miserable were 
to be reclaimed and elevated, that would require a large 
measure of benevolence and Belf-demal. It is evident that 
the clergy of the age were not equal to the work which had 
thus grown upon their hands. They were found wanting, 
both in the kind of knowledge, and in the spirit of self-sac- 
rifice, demanded by the times. This was nowhere more 
felt than by some of the best men of their own order, such 
as Grostcte, the pious and able bishop of Lincoln. 

P.ut in the history of religion, there is a law of action 
and reaction which becomes visible in its season. When 
the Christian priesthood became rich and worldly, mon- 
archism arose as its fitting rebuke; and now that monarch- 
ism, in its turn, has become corrupt, the mendicant orders 
make their appearance, as a great practical protest against the 
inaptitude and selfishness of both monk and priest. This 
event dates from the first half of the thirteenth century.* 

St. Francis, in founding the order which has since bome 
his name, hoped to retain what was good in the existing 
ministries of the church, and discarded many things which 
in his eyes were only so much hindrance and evil. He 
saw not a little to censure in the existing ecclesiastical sys- 
tem. But his object was not so much to reform the church, 

* Butler's Lives; ' St. Francis of AssisiumS Essays in Ecclesiastical Bio- 
graphy, by Sir James Stephen ; ' St. Francis.' Monumenta Franciscana, edited 
by G.S. Brewer, M.A. The admirable Introduction to the last-mentioned publi- 
cation deserves the attention of the student. 



Origin of 
tho Fran- 
ciscans. 



RELIGIOUS LITE IN ENGLAND. 499 

as to supplement its agencies, and indirectly to purify and B £°^ ^ v> 

elevate them. Popes and cardinals, priests and monks, 

were all left to their respective vocations ; but there was a 
work that should be done which none of them were doing, 
and which St. Francis commissioned his disciples to do. 

There was a great want of city missionaries in those days, The Fmn- 
and the early Franciscans were men separated to that ser- comTdty 
vice. In common with the priests and monks of their time, aries. " 
they were not to be married men. In common with the 
monks they were to live together in fraternity. But, unlike 
the monks, they were not to limit their religious duty to 
praying for souls in the chapel of a monastery, but were to 
go in search of them by preaching, and by all humane 
offices, in the lowest parts of the city, or amidst the wretched 
hovels which housed them outside the city gates, or beneath 
the city walls. In common with the parochial clergy, they 
were preachers, having the cure of souls ; but, in distinc- 
tion from the clergy, they made preaching to be their great 
work, found their parish everywhere, and especially where 
ignorance and vice, filth and suffering, were known to be 
most accumulated and least disturbed. The wealth of the 
church had been her great snare, had rendered her inefficient 
— helpless, in regard to the great wants of the age, and the 
Franciscan, in consequence, was to know nothing of reli- 
gious endowments, nothing of a settled revenue for the sup- 
port of his ministry. His dress, his diet, his home, all were 
to be such as to bespeak him a poor man, and to proclaim 
him as the poor man's minister. He was to be the willing 
servant of the community, especially of the most needy and 
forgotten portions of it, and he was to depend on the free 
offerings of the community from day to day for his main- 
tenance. To the honour of Romanism, within its pale, 
poverty in the minister of religion has never been a bar to 
the reverence due to his office. Hence, in originating even 
such an institute, brother Francis could exact, that men, 
to become his disciples, should not only be men of fervent 
piety, but men of fair capacity, and competently learned. 
In the Franciscans of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
what has become known in our time under the name of the 



volcnce. 



500 ENGLISH AND NOEMANS. 

book it. voluntary system, may be said to have been put upon its 

trial. 

settlement When the first delegation of friars landed at Dover in 

of tho Fran- o 

means in 1224, the authorities took them for vagrants, or something 

fcngland. o > t? 

worse. But one of their number satisfied the men in office 
of their mistake, by making very light of being hanged, and 
offered the rope from his waist to be used in the ceremony, 
if no better should be available. Such is the temperament 
generally given to men who have some mission in life. 
"With the help of the scanty fare, and the sour beer, 
obtained at religious houses on their way, the first colony 
of Minorites reach London, and construct tenements foi 
themselves on the Cornhill, near the New-gate. The build- 
ings are of the poorest description imaginable, dried grass 
1 icing stuffed into the crevices to keep out the wind and 
rain. 
Thoirbene- Iu that age plague and leprosy were the terrible mala- 
dies, especially among the crowded populations of towns. 
But leprosy had come into Europe from the Holy Land 
with the return of the Crusaders. Much had been recorded 
concerning it in the sacred Scriptures. It was the figure 
of what all nun arc by nature. Even the Incarnate One 
was regarded as taking his place, in the language of pro- 
phecy, with this class of sufferers. Hence, while some 
looked on the leper with special horror, seeing in that malady 
more than in any other a direct infliction for sin, the more 
general feeling was one of special compassion, and almost 
of religious awe. Persons so afflicted, however, were as 
much shut off from society as they would have been among 
the ancient Hebrews. With the Franciscans, these chil- 
dren of calamity, and the hospitals set apart for them, were 
special objects of attention. In general, the friar knew 
something of the healing art, and exercised his skill in that 
way while administering the consolations of religion. He 
had thus a double claim on the gratitude of the objects of 
his compassion. Of course, the men who were thus to be 
found in the most avoided haunts of human wretchedness, 
were to be found in all places where the necessitous were 
the most likely to be forgotten or neglected. 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 501 

In their preaching, the friars eschewed the learned and bo °k iv. 
logical style then so common. In their view, the clergy Th ^r — 
had become disqualified for their work by their learning, P reachin s- 
hardly less than by their wealth. They were themselves 
poor nien preaching to the poor, and laymen preaching to 
the laity. Their language was studiously simple. Their 
illustrations were studiously popular. They found material 
for discourse in the well-known legend, in dramatic dia- 
logue, in every-day life, and in their own thought and expe- 
rience. Meditation and feeling, more than books, made 
them what they were as preachers. Men and women to 
whom sermons had long been beyond all things unintelli- 
gible and dull, now hung upon the lips of the preacher, and 
would travel far to enjoy that privilege. 

Great was the success of the new institute. In little Their sue- 
more than thirty years the Minorites of England could boast 
of being more than twelve hundred in number, and of 
having fixed centres of operation for their missionary work 
in nearly fifty English towns. As we read the accounts of 
their progress, of the effects produced by their preaching, 
and of the number of conversions, we may almost imagine 
that we are perusing the journal of the pious founder of 
Methodism. Religious and humane persons supplied them 
with funds. Their good works made them many friends. 
But the monk had rarely a good word for them, and the 
parochial clergy generally shared in the same feeling of 
jealousy. 

But it was not to be expected that the energy which The Frau . 
could achieve such things would remain content with that com a e nsb 
indifference to learning which St. Francis had enjoined. earne ' 
The condition of mind with which the Franciscans had to 
deal in the intelligent and sceptical portions of the lower 
classes in towns, rendered it necessary that the ' compe- 
tently learned ' qualification of their founder should be lib- 
erally interpreted. The attacks made upon them, moreover, 
by their rivals, the monks and the clergy, contributed to 
render some changes in this respect necessary. Their great 
patron, Grostete, was fully alive to this necessity, and con- 
sented to deliver lectures to them in Oxford. Many of the 



502 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

book iv. more learned and gifted men of their own order did the same 

Chap. o. ° 

in different parts of the kingdom. So, by degrees, the dis- 
ciples of St. Francis, while adhering to the general maxims 
of his institute, became scientific and learned, and, in the 
end, more scientific and more learned than the older orders 
in the church. Men of scientific taste among them could 
boast of their Friar Bacon, and men of scholastic ambition 
could boast of their Bonaventura and Duns Scotus. 
Good and But evil came from this source with the good. The 
this change, logic of Aristotle was opposed to mysticism. It was an 
assertion of the authority of ' common sense.' It was favour- 
able to exactness in expression, and to the intelligible in 
arrangement. In the hands of the Franciscans it contrib- 
uted largely, directly or indirectly, willingly or unwillingly to 
freedom of thought. Everywhere, a tendency to oppose rea- 
son to mere authority, had become manifest. The Franciscan 
schoolmen declared themselves willing to meet the thought of 
the age on this ground ; and undertook to show that revela- 
tion itself, in place of being :i Betting np of authority against 
reason, was in fact an appeal to reason. It was inevitable that 
the result of taking such ground would be of a mixed nature. 
The existing church, resting as it did alm< *t wholly on author- 
ity, could not fail to suffer. The application of this logic, 
with its endless distinctions, to controversies of every possible 
description, threw such an air of contradiction and unsettled- 
ness over everything, that the men who had acquired a high 
reputation as preachers to the poor, became objects of pop- 
ular contempt, as wasting existence in little else than the 
confounding of each other with their mutual subtleties. 
When learning among the Franciscan leaders had so far 
spoiled them for carrying out the strict intentions of their 
founder, others had begun to show signs of deterioration 
from less reputable causes. That love of ease and indul- 
gence, which St. Francis saw, or thought he saw, in the dis- 
tance, as the great danger of his order, proved to be not 
only there, but to be quite as perilous as his devout fear 
had led him to imagine. Many of his disciples fell under 
those influences. The consequence was a rapid decline in 
popular estimation ; and in their attempts to retain the 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 503 

power which was thus passing away from them, the second book iv 

generation of Franciscans descended so often to the use of 

low artifice and vulgar superstition, that the order which 
had been hailed by men like Grostete as a divine gift to 
the age, are in the end denounced by such men as Chau- 
cer and "Wycliffe as a disgrace to the church and the 
nation. 

In less than thirty years from the death of St. Francis, Eapid dete- 
we find that Bonaventura, the greatest man among the gov- the Fran- 
ernors of his Order, felt constrained to address the provin- 
cial ministers in the following terms : ' The indolence of our 
brethren is laying open the path to every vice. They are 
immersed in carnal repose. They roam up and down every- 
where, burthening every place to which they come. So im- 
portunate are their demands, and such their rapacity, that it 
has become no less terrible to fall in with them than with 
so many robbers. So sumptuous is the structure of their 
magnificent buildings as to bring us all into discredit. So 
frequently are they involved in those culpable intricacies 
which our rule prohibits, that suspicion, scandal, and re- 
proach have been excited against us.' * 

While these signs of change did so much to diminish 
the popularity of the Franciscans, their rigid orthodoxy, 
and the zeal with which they upheld every pretension of 
the papacy, tended to the same result. Innocent III., who 
gave the papal sanction to the mission of St. Francis, was a 
man of extraordinary intelligence and energy. Fraternities 
and sects of every description had grown up of late over 
Europe, all more or less hostile to the priesthood, and to 
the religious teaching of the age. By means of the disciples 
of St. Francis, the far-sighted pontiif hoped to give a check 
to these tendencies, by opposing fraternity to fraternity, and I 
one class of popular preachers to another. It was only as 
shielded by his holiness, that the Franciscans could hope to 
keep their ground in the face of the frequent hostility of 
the bishops, of the older religious orders, and of the more 
influential of the laity. Interest, accordingly, to say noth- 
ing of gratitude, disposed them to become conspicuous 

* Biographical Essays, by Sir James Stephen, i. 149. 



504 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B ch*.5 V " as champions of the papal power, and of its most extrava- 
gant dogmas. The natural effect followed. The reforming 
spirit of the times came to be everywhere against them. 
The antagonism which their institute had seemed to present 
to the enormous wealth and worldliness of the hierarchy 
was pronounced a fraud. If to he distinguished from other 
ecclesiastical schemes, it was only as being more hypocriti- 
cal, by keeping up the appearance of a peculiar self-denial 
which was such only in appearance. Such, however, was 
the shrewd adaptation of the institute to its purpose, that, 
notwithstanding all these abuses, it has survived in con- 
siderable vigour in Catholic countries to this day. The 
great preachers in Italy arc still the ' Preaching Friars.' 

chanccr's The pages of Chaucer disclose much concerning the 

pictures of i i t • /» 1 • ' i 

bocicty. moral and religions state ot the community among whom 
the English Franciscans had to prosecute their labours in 
his day. In the Canterbury Tales, we have a group of char- 
acters which are mostly from the middle class, with frequent 
glances at the general state of manners about the middle of 
the fourteenth cent my. Both the ecclesiastical persons, 
and the lay persons, belong to the same grade. They all 
come before us, moreover, as led out in cavalcade by the 
religious spirit of the times. Their place of destination is 
the tomb of Thomas a Becket. Their object is an act of 
religious worship. Some of these tales, however, are of a 
strange material, especially as coming from the lips of per- 
sons travelling for such a purpose. Some of the stories, 
indeed, show that the legends of ancient piety and martyr- 
dom were .still read by religious persons with deep interest, 
and were made familiar to the ear of society generally. 
Faith, it would appear, in the tender offices and interces- 
sions of the Virgin, was often strong, and also in the re- 
ceived doctrines of the church ; and by that faith the pure 
and afflicted spirit was not unfrcquently sustained under 
much wrong and suffering. It seems clear, that pictures of 
saintly purity, patience, and heroism could be devoutly 
admired in those days. But these tales enable us to look 
into the homes of the middle and lower classes generally, 
both in town and country. They are pictures of habits and 



RELIGIOUS LIFE EST ENGLAND. 505 

manners ; and the strong worldliness and sensuousness B00K IV - 

. , . Chap. 5. 

which were softened by a comparative refinement in the 

upper ranks, are there seen to become so gross as to canse 
the common talk of society to be most licentious and cor- 
rupting. The pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, male 
and female, listen to narratives so obscene and lascivious, 
as to be better suited to the worst haunts of vice than to 
modest and devout ears. The clerk and the monk, the 
prioress and the nun, are all among the listeners to these 
impure stories. Such, it seems, was society, religious 
society, at that time. 

The same tales furnish pictures of ecclesiastical char- 
acters which are in a high degree instructive. The portrait 
of the ' Pardoner' embodies the craft, the covetousness, 
and the mendacity which were attributed to the ' Begging 
Friars' by Armachanus, Wycliffe, and others. The fact that 
religious functionaries of such a character were found 
everywhere, shows what the ecclesiastical system could 
tolerate, and accounts in part for the disaffection with which 
it came to be regarded. Similar thoughts arc suggested by 
the sketch of the ' Sumpnoure,' an official who exacts all 
sorts of clerical dues in a manner the most merciless and 
iniquitous. The monks introduced do little honour to the 
canons of the church touching celibacy ; and the ' Clerke 
of Oxenforde' shows how the parochial clergyman might 
be given to his fopperies and amours, and still retain his 
cure of souls. 

The effect of the errors and corruptions of the ecclesias- Effect of 

t/y> ,,» . „ the existing 

tical system was different on different classes of persons, system on 
Men not disposed to concern themselves with anything of a classes. 
religious nature, were strengthened in every tendency to- 
wards irreligion, and the number of the positively irreli- 
gious, even in those superstitious times, was much greater 
than is commonly imagined. Others were thus influenced 
only so far as to be prompted to lift up their voice in par- 
liament, or elsewhere, against the abuses of the system, con- 
tinuing, after all, in the main, good Catholics. But there 
was another class whose defection rested, not merely on 
moral, or national, but on religious grounds, and who em- 



506 ENGLISH AND NOKMANS. 

B c25 5 V ' Drace< l mos t of the opinions which became prevalent in this 
country as Protestant doctrine in the sixteenth century. 

wycitffe. The name most prominently associated with the progress 

of these opinions is that of John de "Wycliffe. This extra- 
ordinary man is supposed to have been born in 1324, in a 
village which bears his name, on the banks of the Tees in 
Yorkshire. He appears to have entered Oxford in 1340, 
and was mainly resident in that university until within 
about three years of his death, which took place in 1384. 

iiis dispute He first distinguished himself in a controversy with the 

with the ° J 

friars. Mendicant orders, which is generally dated from about the 

year 1360, and when he must have been not more than 
thirty-six years of age. Other writers had marked the 
rapidity with which these orders had fallen away from the 
institute of their founder. Their preaching had degenerated 
so as to be little adapted to the religious or the moral im- 
provement of their hearers. They managed, moreover, to 
become very rich, in the face of a vow which doomed them 
to poverty ; and, as will be supposed, the wealth thus dis- 
ingenuously obtained, became the cause of a still deeper 
deterioration. Bnt many of them had become learned, dis- 
tinguished themselves as professors, and were so skilled in 
intrigue, especially in making proselytes from among the 
sons of wealthy families, that before the middle of the four- 
teenth century, parents had ceased so generally to send their 
children to Oxford, that the students of the University were 
reduced to about a fifth of their former number. There 
were four orders of friars, of which the Dominicans and 
Franciscans, especially the latter, were the best known in 
England. 

The ground taken by Wycliffe in his controversy with 
these fraternities was distinguished from that taken by his 
precursors, as consisting, not so much in complaints of 
alleged abuses, as in exception taken to the institute of the 
religious orders considered in itself. Wycliffe upheld the 
authority of the parochial clergy. He accounted the men- 
dicant preachers intruders upon ground already occupied 
He denounced the conduct of St. Francis and others in 
originating such orders, as an attempt to do something for 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN" ENGLAND. 507 

the church which her Divine Founder had not been wise B00K iv. 

Chap. 5. 

enough, or powerful enough, to do — an assumption which 

he described as nothing short of blasphemy. Thus, in the 
first step of his course as a controversialist, we find the germ 
of the Protestant doctrine concerning the sufficiency of 
Scripture ; and that principle once seized, was never relin- 
quished. The mission of the Saviour was to found his 
church, and to institute that ' order' for her benefit best 
adapted to her need ; and to attempt to supplement and 
amend what He had thus completed, was to reflect on Him 
as a defective instructor, who had not attained to our stand- 
ard of wisdom and goodness. 

In the year 1360, Wycliffe appears to have obtained his ^ is n P s rcfer " 
first preferment, which consisted of the living of Filling- 
ham, in the diocese of Lincoln. That living was in the gift 
of the fellows of Balliol College, Oxford ; and in that same 
year Wycliffe became master of Balliol. Four years later 
he ceased, from causes unknown to us, to be master of 
Balliol, and became known as warden of Canterbury Hall, 
founded by Simon de Islep, who was then archbishop of 
Canterbury.* Canterbury Hall was designed at first for a 
certain number of clerical or secular scholars ; together 
with a lesser number and a warden, who should be monks, 
and be chosen by the monastery of Christchurch, Canter- 
bury. But the rivalries between the parochial clergy and 
the religious orders in those days were ceaseless and bitter. 
The experiment in this case was not successful. Feud grew 
up between the two parties ; and Islep resolved to alter the 
foundation of the establishment by restricting its advan- 
tages to the secular clergy only, to the exclusion of either 
monks or friars. It was on this new basis that Wycliffe, 
by the choice of Islep, became warden. The monks became 
excluded, and with them Woodhall the warden. Woodhall 
and his brother monks protested against this proceeding, 

* Attempts have been recently made to show that the warden of Canterbury 
Hall was not Wycliffe the Reformer, but one Whyteclyve of Mayfield, who is 
supposed to have been in favour with archbishop Islep. But this new idea is 
beset with all sorts of difficulty — the old one is, we feel assured, the true one. — 
See the subject discussed in John, de Wycliffe, a Monograph, by the Author, 
c. iii. And in an article intitled Wycliffe, his Biographers and Critics, in No. 
LVI. of the British Quarterly Review. 



508 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B ch.5 5 V " anc ^ petitioned Peter Langham, who became archbishop of 

Canterbury in the place of Islep, deceased, to annul what 

had been done, and to restore them to their former position. 
Their plea was, that Islep had been unduly influenced in 
making the late change, and had taken this course in his 
last sickness, when incompetent to act. Langham, who 
had himself been a monk, and abbot of "Westminster, was 
inclined to perpetuate the original connexion between Can- 
terbury Hall and the monastery in Canterbury, and accord- 
ingly restored "Woodhall and his brethren. It was now 
"WyclifFe's turn to protest. But for him and his expelled 
clerks there was no remedy, it seems, except by causing 
their suit to be taken to the papal court. This step was 
taken. The litigation thus commenced extended over nearly 
four years — from 1367 to 1370 ; and through the joint in- 
fluence of Canterbury and gold, a verdict was at length ob- 
tained in favour of the monks, 
ins opinion It was while tins cause was pending, that pope Urban 
john e tri-" s demanded payment of the tribute promised by king John. 
We have seen how the English parliament met that 
demand. An anonymous monk published an argument in 
favour of the claim which had been thus repudiated, and 
challenged Wycliffe by name to reply to it. "Wycliffe, 
who by his time had become chaplain to the king, answered 
the challenge in a paper which gives the substance of the 
debate upon the question in the House of Lords. In this 
paper Wycliffe declares the papal claim to be baseless, on 
the ground both of reason and Scripture. He was well 
aware of the probable etfect of such a course on his pend- 
ing suit ; but he nevertheless gives utterance in this publi- 
cation to some of those opinions which, as further developed 
and diffused, were to expose him ere long to so much 
trouble. 
Becomes "Wycliffe appears to have taken his degree as Doctor in 

professor. Drvuu'tv in 1372, which authorized him, according to the 
usage of those times, to deliver lectures as a professor of 
theology in the university. He availed himself promptly 
and sedulously of this privilege. Two years later, we find 
him one of an embassy appointed to negotiate with the 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IK ENGLAND. 509 

papal delegates at Bruges, on those proceedings of the ^i^ 1 / 

papal court of which such frequent and loud complaint had 

been made in the English parliament. The part taken by 
"Wycliffe in this embassy, which lasted nearly two years, and 
the effect of his more public labours in Oxford, rendered 
him increasingly obnoxious to the papal court, and to the 
more servile of its partisans in this country. 

In 1377, accordingly, letters are sent by the pope, both ^^fnst 
to Oxford and to Canterbury, insisting that inquiry should Mm - 
be forthwith made concerning tne doctrines said to be pro- 
mulgated by "Wycliffe. He is in consequence summoned to 
appear before the English convocation in St. Paul's. He 
makes his appearance there, but it is with John of Gaunt, 
duke of Lancaster, on the one side, and earl Percy, marshal 
of England, on the other. Courtney, bishop of London, 
was the presiding churchman ; and the advance of the 
noblemen and their attendants towards the space where the 
clergy were seated, appears to have caused some noise and 
disturbance. An old Chronicle has described the scene 
which ensued. 

Bishop Courtney. — Lord Percy, if I had known what 
masteries you would have kept in the church, I would have 
stopped you from coming hither. 

Duke of Lancaster. — He shall keep such masteries, 
though you say nay. 

Lord Percy. — Wycliffe, sit down, for you have many 
things to answer to, and you need to repose yourself on a 
soft seat. 

Bishop Courtney. — It is unreasonable that one cited be- 
fore his ordinary should sit down during his answer. He 
must and shall stand. 

Duke of Lancaster. — Lord Percy's motion for "Wycliffe 
is but reasonable. And as for you, my lord bishop, who 
are grown so proud and arrogant, I will bring down the 
pride, not of you alone, but of all the prelacy in Eng- 
land. 

Bishop Courtney. — Do your worst, sir. 

Duke of Lancaster. — Thou bearest thyself so brag upon 



510 



ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 



Synod nt 
Lambeth. 



book iv. thy parents,* which sliall not be able to keep thee : they 
shall have enough to do to help themselves. 

Bishop Courtney. — My confidence is not in my parents,, 
nor in any man else, but only in God, in whom I trust, by 
whose assistance I will be bold to speak the truth. 

Duke of Lancaster. — Rather than I will take these 
words at his hands, I will pluck the bishop by the hair out 
of the church. f 

This last expression was dropped in an undertone to 
earl Percy. It was heard, however, by the people near, 
who seem to have been more disposed to side with the 
bishop than with the duke. Much excitement and con- 
fusion followed. The meeting was dissolved, and the 
Reformer withdrew under the protection of his powerful 
friends. 

Some nine months later, it was noised abroad that Wyc- 
liffe was about to appear before a synod of the clergy in 
Lambeth. On this occasion he had not the presence of 
great men to sustain him. But the people were with him, 
and in their demonstrations in his favour became loud and 
disorderly. Encouraged by the presence of some wealthy 
citizens, the populace forced their way into the chapel, to 
be witnesses of the proceedings. The clergy were alarmed. 
Still more so when Sir Lewis Clifford made his appearance, 
and in the name of the queen-mother forbade their proceed- 
ing to any conclusions injurious to Wycliffe. 

Something, however, was done. "Wycliffe had received 
a paper containing a statement of the false doctrines at- 
tributed to him. To \\\\< paper the Reformer had prepared 
a written answer, which was placed in the hands of the 
commissioners. Wycliffe retired amidst the acclamations 
of the people, but the delegates sat in judgment on his 
paper, and the sentiments expressed in it were all declared 
to be either erroneous or heretical. The grand points in 
this document were twofold — those which placed the ulti- 
mate authority in relation to the persons and property of 
churchmen in the hands of the laity ; and those which 

* His father was the powerful Hugh Courtney, earl of Devonshire, a family 
which boasted of its descent from Charlemagne. 

f Ex. Hist. Monachi Albani, in Foxe, Acts and Mon. ii. 797 800. 



Wycliffe's 
reply to 
chnrpes 
against him. 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 511 

stripped the censure pronounced so freely by ecclesiastics B ^5 5 V 

in those times of all validity, except as they should happen 

to be in accordance with the will of God. It pertained to 
the laity, as an ultimate authority, to correct a delinquent 
clergy ; and the supposed power of the priest to make the 
spiritual condition of any man at all other than the man 
himself had already made it, was declared to be a mere 
priestly invention. This was to deprive the clergy of the 
weapons which had given them the sort of dominion in 
things temporal and spiritual of which they were pos- 
sessed. It was to take the souls of the people out of their 
hands. 



During the next four years Wycliffe's labours in Ox- 2octx!nl 



transub- 



the 
of 



ford were abundant, both in lecturing and in authorship. stl 
Through every year during the last twenty years of his life, 
his opinions appear to have become more and more adverse 
to those which the ruling clergy were concerned to 
uphold. The climax of his offending at the close of the 
four years mentioned was, his lecturing openly against the 
doctrine of transubstantiation. Proceeding thus far, he was 
silenced by the chancellor of the university, and his power 
to be useful as heretofore in Oxford, was thus brought to a 
clos*e. This happened in 1381. 

The remaining three years of his life he resided on his Retires to 
cure as rector of Lutterworth, where he preached constantly, worth? 
revised his theological lectures for publication, carried on 
his translation of the entire Bible into English, and pub- 
lished an almost incredible number of tracts and treatises, 
all bearing on his one object — the reformation of the re- 
ligion of the times. 

According to the doctrine of "Wycliffe, the crown was Summary 
supreme in authority, over all persons and possessions in doctrine. 
this realm of England — the persons of churchmen being 
amenable to the civil courts, in common with the laity ; 
and the property of churchmen being subject to the will of 
the king, as expressed through the law of the land, in com- 
mon with all other property. Nor was it enough that he 
should thus preclude the papal court from all meddling with 
secular affairs in this English land. According to his ulti- 



512 ENGLISH AND NOKMANS. 

B ch^ 5 V ' ma te doctrine, the pretence of the pope to exercise even 
spiritual jurisdiction over the church of England, as being 
himself the head of all churches, should be repudiated as an 
insolent and mischievous usurpation. The whole frame- 
work of the existing hierarchy he describes as a device of 
clerical ambition ; the first step in its ascending scale, the 
distinction between bishop and presbyter, being an innova- 
tion on the polity of the early church, in which the clergy 
were all upon an equality. 

Concerning the Sacraments, he retained the ordinance 
of Baptism, but without receiving the doctrine of the 
church in respect to it as being necessary in all cases to sal- 
vation. In like maimer he retained the ordinance of the 
Lord's Supper, but without the doctrine of transubstantia- 
tion or of consubstantiation. Confirmation was, in his view, 
a custom originated by churchmen to gratify their pride ; 
and penance was a usage which had come from the same 
source, and which had been so managed as to be always 
much prized by covetous and ambitious priests. To the 

• same effect does he express himself concerning the alleged 

sacraments of Holy Orders and Extreme Unction. None 
of these services, he maintains, necessarily convey any 
beneficial influence, and all are more or less disfigured by 
superstition, and fraught with delusion. But "Wycliffe was 
a believer to the last in the existence of an intermediate 
state, and in the efficacy of prayer on the part of the living 
for souls in that state. But masses for the dead he de- 
scribes as a piece of priestly machinery, carefully adjusted 
with a view to gain. The prayer of a layman, he insisted, 
would be quite as efficacious as that of a priest, while all 
prayer must be fruitless, except as coming from faith and 
charity. In regard to church censures, he taught that men 
arc never the better nor the worse for them, inasmuch as the 
spiritual condition of the worshipper, as a responsible crea- 
ture, and that alone, determined his destiny. He saw the 
wealth of the church as St. Francis had seen it, as having 
brought all kind of evil upon Christendom. But he was 
not content simply to oppose an order of ' poor priests' to 
an order of rich ones. His maxim was, that it became 



RELIGTOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 513 

every Christian people to support a Christian priesthood, ^ 00K J V - 

but that suitable ' livelihood and clothing' were sufficient. : 

In short, there was a lofty idealism in his doctrine concern- 
ing human authority altogether, which was liable to be 
misunderstood, and brought him into some trouble. His 
general notion on this subject, though derived mainly from 
Augustine, has a feudal cast about it. In his view, the 
Divine Being is Chief Lord in relation to all earthly author- 
ities and possessions. All .are received from him on con- 
ditions, and those conditions failing, the gifts are forfeited 
— but forfeited in respect to God, not in respect to man. 
The priest who fell into mortal sin forfeited his office and 
possessions in respect to man ; but "Wycliffe's writings 
abundantly show, that in the case of the layman, when found 
to be thus delinquent, the consequences were regarded as 
purely spiritual, and as having relation to God only, not as 
temporal, and to be dealt with as such by society.* 

The fact that a man who published such tenets should ^u^n* 
have lived at large so long, and have died in his bed, sug- tl^/th'" 
gests that the force of opinion on the side of free thought centur ^ 
and free utterance must have been great in those days. It 
is true, bishop Courtney could venture to bring the terrors ' 
of persecution to bear on men of less mark ; but it appears to 
have been felt to the last, that to adopt severe measures to- 
wards "Wycliffe, might be to evince more zeal than prudence. 
His opinions embraced nearly every dogma since professed 
by Protestants, and some which were so far advanced that 
few Protestants even now are found prepared to adopt 
them. He multiplied tracts and treatises in English, and 
of a size to admit of wide circulation, to a marvellous ex- 
tent. He encouraged a class of men, known by the name 
of ' poor priests,' to travel from county to county, and to 
preach in churchyards, fairs, markets, or in any other place 
where people were wont to congregate, and might be dis- 
posed to listen to them. Nor were these itinerant orators 
without their friends. Knights and gentlemen might often 

* John de Wycliffe, c. xii. Wycliffe, his Biographers and Critics, 37. 
The Rev. W. W. Shirley's account of Wycliffe, recently published {Fasciculi 
Zizaniorum), is full of error. 

Vol. I.— 33 



514 ENGLISH AND NORMANS. 

B ch5 5 V ' ^ e seen landing near them, prepared to act as their defend- 

era.* These agencies came, as we have seen, in the wake 

of much that served to make the people willing to hearken 
to such instructors. Such was the effect produced on the 
popular mind, that, according to the historians of the time, 
you might be sure that every second man you met would 
be a disciple of the new doctrine. On the whole, it is hardly 
too much to say, that England was more ripe for a Protes- 
tant reformation in the last days of Edward III. than in the 
best days of Henry TILT. But the continent was not in an 
equal degree prepared for such a change. 

The policy of Richard II. towards religion, was like his 
policy in everything, right and wrong by turns, but always 
feeble. Under his sanction the persecution of the disciples 
of Wycliffe began. But while thus making enemies of all 
classes of reformers, he failed to make friends of the clergy, 
or of the papal court, lie did many things which were 
meant to be acceptable in those quarters, but he had neither 
the power nor the disposition to do all that was expected 
from him. The persecution of the Lollards — for by that name 
the religions reformers now began to be distinguished, ex- 
tended over the whole reign of Richard II. It was particu- 
larly felt in Herefordshire, Leicester, Nottingham, and m 
Northampton. But the feeling of disaffection was not sub- 
dued, it was rather diffused, and became more outspoken. 
The memorable ' Remonstrance' of this party, published in 
1395, as an address to the people and parliament of Eng- 
land, furnished sufficient evidence on this point. 

The The authors of this paper say that the church of England, 

Wyclifflto . .. -i i . • t> i -i 

remon- since she began to dote on temporalities, after the example 
of Rome her stepmother, has declined in faith, hope, and 
charity, and become infected with pride and all deadly sin ; 
that priestly ordination, as commonly performed, is a hu- 
man invention, and delusive, the gift of the Holy Ghost 
being restricted to spiritual men, and never conferred be- 
cause a bishop affects to confer it ; that the professed celi- 
bacy of the clergy leads to every kind of sensuous wicked- 
ness and that for this reason, all monasteries and nunneries 

* Knighton, 2660, 2661. 



gtrance. 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 515 

should be dissolved : that the doctrine of transubstantiation, B <? 0K IT - 

' t ' Chap. 5. 

as commonly taught, is inseparable from idolatry, and would 

be at once discarded if the language of the Evangelical doc- 
tor ("Wycliffe), in his Trialogus, were wisely considered ; 
that the custom of exorcising, and the manner of consecrat- 
ing places and things, savour more of necromancy than of 
the Gospel ; that the clergy sin against religion and the 
state by assuming worldly offices ; that prayer for the dead, 
if offered at all, should have respect to the departed gen- 
erally, and not to particular persons, all hireling services of 
this nature, as wanting in charity, being assuredly value- 
less ; that auricular confession and absolution, as ordinarily 
practised, lead to impurity, and are of no worth, except as 
serving to uphold the dominion of priests ; that pilgrimages 
to do honour to images and relics are idolatrous, a device 
of the clergy to keep the people in ignorance, and to aug- 
ment their own wealth and power ; and that all aggressive 
wars, whether on the plea of religion or conquest, are con- 
trary to the letter and spirit of the religion of Christ.* 

These were bold utterances to be found in a document 
presented to the commons of England. But so presented it 
was, and its contents were largely discussed, as including 
much deserving grave consideration. Richard censured 
Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir John Latimer, Sir Richard Sturry, 
Sir John Montague, and others, for the favour shown by 
them to the complaints of these malcontents. Pope Boni- 
face wrote expressing his amazement and grief that men 
should be found in the English parliament capable of sym- . 
pathizing in any degree with such opinions. But the re- 
forming members of the Lower House found the rebuke of 
the king and the pope more than counterbalanced by the 
applause of the people. Papers were posted by night on 
the doors of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, in which 
ridicule and scorn were heaped upon the errors and corrup- 
tions attributed to the religious orders and to the clergy 
generally.f 

It may seem strange, that the clergy of the fourteenth seasoning 
centurv should find themselves confronted with these signs clergy at 

^ ° this time. 

* Remonstrance, &c, edited by Rev. G. Forshall. f Foxe, an. 1395 



516 



ENGLISH AND N0KMANS. 



book iv. f disaffection, and never appear to suspect that there was 

some truth and justice in the feeling thus expressed, nor 

seem to have once thought that it might possibly be wise 
to endeavour to neutralize and remove it by amendment. 
They might reasonably take exception to many of these 
opinions, and to much in the temper of the men by whom 
they were broached. The logic of Wycliffe himself might 
be often at fault, and his temper not less so, but was there 
nothing in the man or in his doings entitled to a better 
estimation ? In the place of any measure of considerateness 
and discrimination of this sort, the one idea of the clergy 
seems to have been, that the discontented were such always 
and wholly without reason, and that the only fitting mode 
to deal with them was to coerce them, and, when possible, 
to crush them without mercy. 

Ketrospect. Such, then, were the conditions of religious life in Eng- 
land from the age of Magna Charta to the accession of the 
house of Lancaster. The relations between the English 
church and the papacy, led to endless disputes between the 
crown and the ruling classes on the one side — and the 
popes, with their dependents and adherents, on the other. 
With religion proj>er these strifes had little to do. The 
struggle was between two great systems of patronage. The 
object on either side, was to secure the largest possible 
share in the distribution of the offices and emoluments of 
an opulent hierarchy. Beneath the region in which this 
conflict was carried on were the people, who were not 
■ greatly edified by the example thus constantly presented to 
them on the part of the powers above them. But as politi- 
cians were -thus taught to use sharp speech in describing 
the conduct of the accredited guides of the church, the 
example became infectious, and something of its effect is 
seen in that free utterance of the popular mind on religious 
matters which characterized the reign of Edward III. Dur- 
ing that half century, the civil power was expected to be 
the shield of those who ventured upon such criticisms ; and 
fear of the clergy was limited by the fact, that whatever 
might be their disposition to persecute, it was no secret 
that their power in that direction was not great. In the 



RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. 517 

latter half of the fourteenth century, accordingly, we find b °°k i 5 v - 

the interval in our annals which is marked by the highest 

culture, and the largest measure of freedom, known in our 
history, until we come to the times of the Reformation. 
Mentally, ethically, and religiously, the reign of Edward 
III. is the brightest portion of our Middle Age life. It 
gave us all the great principles and precedents of the Eng- 
lish Constitution, and with these our Chaucer and our "Wyc- 
liife. Men felt, in those days, that they might be devout 
without fear, cherish freedom of thought, and indulge in a 
large freedom of speech. On the accession of Richard II., 
the spirit of the country was more buoyant and free than 
on the accesion of Henry VIII., and the relative number of 
truly devout men in it would seem to have been much 
greater in the former time than in the latter. 



BOOK V. 

LANCASTER AND YORK. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE REACTION. 



BOOK V. 

(IIA1-. 1. 

Accession 
of Henry 
IV. 



THE arbitrary conduct of Richard II., coupled as it was 
with so many signs of weakness and wickedness, ac- 
count sufficiently for the deposition which awaited him. 
The earl of March, son of Lionel, duke of Clarence, was the 
next heir to the throne. But Henry of Lancaster, who was 
also cousin to Richard, had suffered much from his hands, 
and was placed by circumstances at the head of the power- 
ful party in arms against him. By the barons, the clergy, 
and the people, Lancaster was regarded as the most eligible 
person to fill the vacant throne ; and, by an act of the Eng- 
lish parliament, Henry, duke of Lancaster, was accepted as 
king of England. 

These events form an epoch of change. The causes of 
this change, however, were not so much national as person- 
al. "We find them in the character of the king, and in the 
factions of his court. They came from the nation only in so 
far as the nation had become possessed with a spirit of free- 
dom, and had been too long familiar with the forms of com- 
paratively good government, to allow of its being content 



THE REACTION. 519 

under a king whose passions so often set law at defiance, B q°£ J* 
and tended only to bad government. 

But if the causes of this change are found in persons His policy , 
more than in the nation, the interests of the nation were 
deeply affected by it. Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, 
visited Henry in his exile, and induced him to engage in 
the enterprise which placed him on the throne. This circum- 
stance seemed to promise that there would be a fast friend- 
ship between the house of Lancaster and the church. But, 
on the other hand, John of Gaunt, the father of the new king, 
had been the great patron of Wycliffe, and the king himself 
had been disposed at one time to favour the new doctrines. 
It soon became manifest, however, that the crown and the 
mitre were about to combine in an effort to crush those ten- 
dencies on the side of a change in religion which had grown 
to be so formidable. Henry knew, probably, that, since the 
disorders under Wat Tyler, many of the great men had 
learnt to look with suspicion on the proceedings of the re- 
formers, and he appears to have persuaded himself, that 
Lollardism in the middle and lower classes might be kept 
safely in check, if only the church and the barons should 
prove faithful to him. 

But his nobles were not all found faithful. The rumours 
of plotting against him, in more than one quarter, soon came 
to his ears. Men whom his clemency had spared conspired 
to destroy him. The Scots, the Welsh, and the Percys, com- 
pelled him to take the field against them. In all these 
signs of unsettledness we see the effect of the irregularities 
and violence to which Henry had been indebted for his ele- 
vation. f He was a king, but the Percys had made him 
such, and the jealousies from this source, and others of a 
similar complexion elsewhere, made his experience of sov- 
ereignty no enviable matter. 

For a while, however, even the House of Commons were statute for 
prepared to abet some of the worst features of the king's heretkf 
policy. In the second year of Henry IV. the statute for 
the burning of heretics was passed. This instrument com- 
mences with stating that complaints were often and every- 
where made about persons who, without licence from the 



520 



LANCASTER AND YORK. 



BOOK V. 
Chap. 1. 



Bawtre and 

Badby 

burnt. 



proper authority, gave themselves to preaching ; who re- 
tained possession of heretical books, convened unlawful 
assemblies, and diffused in many ways the most pestilent 
opinions. The provisions made against these disorders are 
— that no man shall preach in future who is not duly au 
thorized ; that, within the next forty days, all books con- 
taining doctrines at variance with the determinations of the 
church, shall be delivered to the ecclesiastical officers ; 
that all persons suspected of offending in these respects, or 
of being present at unlawful meetings, or of favouring such 
meetings, or the errors taught in them, shall be committed 
to the bishop's prison, to be dealt with at his pleasure, 
during a space not exceeding three months ; and if such 
persons fail to clear themselves of the charges brought 
against them, or shall not abjure their errors if convicted, 
or shall relapse into error after such abjuration, then the 
officers of the place, both civil and clerical, shall confer to- 
gether, ' and sentence being duly pronounced, the magis- 
trate shall take into hand the persons so offending, and any 
of them, and cause thcjn to he hurncd in the sight of all the 
people, to the intent that this kind of punishment may be a 
terror to others, that the like wicked doctrine and heretical 
opinions, and the authors or favourers of them, may not 
be any longer maintained within the realm.'* In this law 
we see how the king could use a subservient parliament, 
and how the clergy could use a selfish and blood-guilty 
king. To this statute another was added, which declared 
ecclesiastics exempt from the tribunal of the magistrate in 
criminal cases, a demand of the clergy which had been so 
often resisted by our sovereigns. 

Two men perished under the statute for the burning of 
heretics during the reign of Henry TV. — William Sawtre, a 
clergyman, and John Badby, a mechanic. They had both 
embraced the doctrine of Wycliffe on the eucharist, and on 
some other points. Sawtre appears to have been somewhat 

* Stat. 2 Henry IV. c. 15. Coke, Instit. p. iii. c. 5. Strange to say, Sir 
Edward's exposition of the reason of this statute, if admitted, would seem fully 
to justify it. We proscribe the leper, and heresy, he writes, is the deadliest 
form of leprosy. — Burnet's Reformation, bk. i. 44, 45. Fuller's Church Hist. ii. 
385-390. 



THE REACTION". 521 

wanting in consistency and firmness. Badby was a true book y. 

martyr. Both perished at the stake.* But the king did 

not rise in popular estimation by this policy. Placards were 
fixed on church doors, and elsewhere, denouncing him as a 
perjured tyrant and usurper. The blood of his prede- 
cessor, and of other noble persons, was said to be upon him. 
Discontented barons, and persecuted "Wycliffites, were pre- 
pared to join in league against him. He was soon obliged 
to unsheath the sword in defence of his crown ; and in 
future he does not cease to find assailants of his policy 
within the walls of parliament. 

In the fourth year of his reign the commons petitioned ^trit™f tEo 
that every benefice should have an incumbent always resi- Commons - 
dent ; that no Frenchman who had taken the vows of a 
monk should remain in the kingdom ; that all priories in 
the hands of foreigners should be seized ; that the clergy 
and the religious orders should be required to do hospitality 
from their revenues ; and that no youth under the age of 
twenty-one should be received into any order of mendi- 
cants. These were demands which "Wycliffe would have 
applauded. 

"When the next parliament assembled, an attempt was 
made by the chancellor to repress this freedom, by stating, 
in behalf of the king, that it was the royal pleasure that the 
church should be maintained, in all her immunities, as in 
the times of his predecessors, every kingdom being like the 
human body, possessing a right side, which consists of the 
church, and a left, which consists of the temporal powers, 
the commonalty being as the remaining members. The 
reply of the commons to this arrogant nonsense, was in the 
shape of a petition praying the king to remove his confessor, 
and two other persons of his household. Henry now saw 
that his attempt to over-awe the reformers by high talk had 
not been successful. He not only assented to the petition, 
but added that he was prepared to displace any other per- 
sons whose presence near him may have been displeasing 
to his people. Nothing, he assured his faithful commons, 

* Wilkins, iii. 254 et seq. Foxe, i. 675, 687. Fuller's Church Hist. ii. 
391, 392. 



522 LANCASTER AND YORK. 

cha^ 7' was nearer hi s heart, than to reign as a good king ; and he 

proceeded so far as to invite the house to lay freely before 

him whatever measures should appear to them as likely to 
conduce to the honour of God, or the welfare of the state.* 
It is probable that by this language the king hoped to 
check, rather than to stimulate, the reforming spirit of the 
commons. But if such was his policy, it was not successful. 
The commons prayed that the persons selected by the king, 
in the settling of his household, should be persons of good 
reputation, and that notification should be given them of 
what was done in that respect. In the next session, they 
proceed so far as to urge that the king should provide for 
the expenses of his establishment without aid from parlia 
ment. On the matter of his household arrangements Henry 
readily assented ; and on the matter of his expenses he 
promised to do as desired so soon as convenient.! 

In dealing with ecclesiastical matters the commons did 
not scruple to complain of the king as allowing the burdens 
of his wars to fall much too lightly on the clergy. The 
archbishop of Canterbury said, in reply, that the clergy 
paid their tenths more frequently than the laity did their 
fifteenths ; that they sent their tenants to join the king's 
standard whenever required to do so ; and that they were 
themselves doing him no small service by engaging in relig- 
ious services, day and night, in his favour. The Speaker 
touched slightingly on those spiritual contributions of the 
clergy to which the archbishop appeared to attach so much 
importance — whereupon the primate threw himself at the 
feet of the king, imploring him to use his authority for the 
protection of the church, declaring himself willing to en- 
counter any danger from fire or sword, rather than see the 
church bereft of the smallest portion of her rights.:}: But 
the commons were not to be diverted from their course by 
these passionate proceedings. They drew up a statistical 
paper, which was said to show, that the possessions of the 
prelates, the abbots, and the priors, were so great, that 
there should be contributed to the service of the crown 

* Plac. Pari. 499-525. f Ibid. iii. 525-549 

X Wals. Hist. 371 et seq. 



THE REACTION. 523 

from that source, over and above the contribution at pre- B q®£ J; 
sent made, a sum equal in value to the service claimed from 
13 earls, 1500 knights, and 6200 esquires ! 

When these figures came before the king, his fortunes 
were in an improved condition. He could afford to evade 
the questions thus raised, and he did so. Discouraged at 
this point, the commons directed their attention to another. 
They prayed that all ecclesiastics might be placed in sub- 
jection to the lay tribunals in civil cases, as in former 
times ; and one effect of the recent execution of John 
Badby, was to lead the commons to petition for a repeal of 
the statute for burning heretics. To the former petition 
the king did not — perhaps dared not — assent ; with the 
latter, he so far complied, that no further execution for 
heresy took place during his reign.* 

While the reformers in parliament employed themselves ^ r n u s °f t ^ 8 
after this manner, the prelates were assiduous in their en- tions - 
deavours to strengthen themselves in the more favourable 
position which new circumstances had assigned to them. 
In a convocation of the clergy in 1408, a series of ' constitu- 
tions,' attributed to archbishop Arundel, were adopted, 
which declared that the pope, as holding the keys of life 
and death for the world to come, is to us, not in the place 
of man, but in the place of God ; that, in consequence, the 
guilt of those who question his decisions is the guilt of 
rebellion and sacrilege ; that to bring the heresies and mis- 
chiefs which have been so long tolerated in the land to an 
end, it is expedient to determine that no man shall in future 
attempt to preach without the licence of his ordinary ; that 
preaching shall be restricted in all cases to the simple mat- 
ters prescribed in the instruction provided in aid of the 
ignorance of priests, and beginning ignorantia sacerdotum • 
that any clergyman offending against this rule shall forfeit 
his temporalities, and be liable to the penalty awarded in 
the recent statute against heresy ; that any church into 
which a teacher of this description is admitted shall be laid 
under an interdict ; that no schoolmaster shall mix reli- 
gious instruction with the teaching of youth, nor permit 

* Walsing. Hist. 421, 422. Plac. Pari. 623. 



52-i LANCASTER AND YORK. 

B C ° H ^ J- discussion about the sacraments, nor any reading of the 
Scriptures in English ; that all books of the kind written by 
John Wycliffe, and others of his time, or hereafter to be 
written, l»e banished from schools, halls, and all places 
whatsoever ; that no man shall hereafter translate any part 
of scripture into English on his own authority ; and that 
all persons convicted of making or using such translations 
shall be punished as favourers of error and heresy ; that no 
man shall be allowed to dispute concerning the decrees of 
the church, whether given in her general or provincial 
councils, nor to take exception to authorized customs, sueh 

as making pilgrimage to BhrineB, adoring images, or the 

cross, on pain of being accounted heretical; that all possible 
moans 1m- need to root out the heresies known under the 
( new and damnable name of Lollardy,' as everywhere, so 
especially in the University of Oxford, once so famous for 
its Orthodoxy, hut of Into BO poisoned with false doctrines; 

and. finally, inasmuch as the sin of heresy is more enor- 
mous than treason, since it h resistance to the authority of 
Seaven as present in die church, all persons suspected of 

this offence, and refusing to appear before the proper au- 
thorities when cited, .-hall be adjudged guilty.* 

Honest John Foxe, in making note of these 'constitu- 
tions, 9 adds, 'Who WOUld have thought, by these laWS and 

constitutions, bo substantially founded, so circumspectly 
provided, so diligently executed, but that the name and 
memory of this persecuted Bed Bhould have been utterly 

rooted Up, and never should have st 1 ! And vet such be 

the works of the Lord, passing all man's admiration, not- 
withstanding all this, BO far was it off that the number and 

courage of these good men were indeed vanquished, that 
they rather multiplied daily, especially in London, and 
LinoofasKire, Norfolk, Herefordshire, in Shrewsbury, in 
Calais, and divers other places.'f 

* Labbe, Concilia, vii. 19.15-1948. The licence thus given to the clergy 
did not prevent the commons from parsing a rigorous law against tin; old evil of 
proviso™, first-fruits, otc. — Stat. 8 Henry IV. In the following year laws Btill 
more stringent wire passed, forbidding the disposal of livings by provisors, 
either on the part of the court of Rome, or of the crown. — 7 Henry IV. c. 6, 8. 
Collier, i. 620-627. 

f Act* and Man, i. 986, 987. 



THE REACTION. 525 

Care, it will be seen, was taken to remind the parties book v. 

concerned, of the existence of the ' late statute ' against 

heresy ; and that the terrors of that statute might not slum- 
ber, the object of these ' constitutions ' appears to have been, 
to give as wide a latitude, and, at the same time, as deep an 
enormity, as possible, to the crime of heresy. From this 
time forth, the slightest sign of disaffection towards received 
opinions or customs might be construed as warranting sus- 
picion of heretical pravity ; while that pravity itself was 
declared to be a more deadly sin than treason — the sin for 
which men were hung, drawn, and quartered, being treason 
only against man, while heresy was treason against God. 

During the ascendency of the House of Lancaster, many Lord cob- 
Englishmen perished, under the charge of heresy. Of these, 
the most conspicuous was Lord Cobham ; ' a man,' says 
Horace Walpole, ' whose virtue made him a reformer, and 
whose courage made him a martyr.' The fate of Cobham 
is the great blot in the reign of Henry Y. It is true, Lord 
Cobham was known as a disciple of "Wycliffe, and as a zeal- 
ous patron of the class of persons known as Wycliffites. 
But his disaffection embraced neither disloyalty nor im- 
piety. It had respect to alleged errors and corruptions, 
which were said to be rooted in the existing church system ; 
and his honest aim was to remove these disfigurements, 
through the influence of a more enlightened public opinion. 
But Henry Y. was a skilful and brave soldier, and nothing 
more. His slight attachment to literature had respect to it 
only in its relation to chivalry. He cared nothing about 
popular liberty — did not understand it. With him, it was 
as much a matter of course that a man should obey his priest, 
as that a soldier should do the bidding of his officer. Such 
submission Cobham was not prepared to render, and as he 
could not cease to be honest, he was not permitted to live.* 

Archbishop Chicheley, who succeeded Arundel, sur- rersecu- 
passed him in zeal against the reformers. He ordered chicheley. 
special inquisition to be made through every diocese in 
his province twice a year, that no persons suspected of 

* The case of Lord Cobham is dispassionately considered by Sharon Turner, 
ii. 451-454 ; and by Dean Milman, v. 529, 631-534. 



526 LANCASTER AND YORK. 

B chap 7' neres 7 might anywhere escape detection. In any parish 
which had fallen under suspicion, three respectable inhabi- 
tants might be selected, and made to answer the inquiries 
of official persons on oath, touching any persons or circum- 
stances of their neighborhood. Of the multitudes who were 
apprehended by such means, some recanted ; others with- 
stood much inquisitorial scrutiny, and remained long in 
prison ; while others saw their whole property confiscated. 
During the reigns of Henry V. and VI., scarcely a year 
passed in which men might not be seen perishing at the 
stake as heretics, either in Smithfield or on Tower Hill. 
In the registry of the diocese of Lincoln, some time later, 
more than fire hundred names are found as those of persons 
against whom proceedings had been taken on the charge or 
suspicion of heresy.* We know not that even these were 
all the names so registered ; but the history of Lincoln in 
this respect may be taken as an indication of the course of 
proceeding over the whole kingdom. In the earlier part of 
this century, the law provided that the property of a heretic 
should be divided into three parts, the first of which fell 
to the king, the second to the city in which the conviction 
occurred, the third to the judge ! Subsequently, the prop- 
erty confiscated went wholly to the crown. f 
Effect of the It requires some effort of imagination to estimate to the 
full the suffering which must have been diffused through 
the homes of the people of England by this network of 
agencies. The more so, inasmuch as it was scarcely possi- 
ble that the sincere reformer should guard against betray- 
ing his feeling continually. The profligate would take note 
of his seriousness. Even that would be enough to war- 
rant suspicion. The superstitious would observe what he 
did, or abstained from doing, in regard to the religious ob- 
servances of the times ; and from such appearances would 
form their conclusions, and indulge in their dangerous talk. 
Not to worship as others did, or not to worship at all, was 
alike perilous. To be in any respect singular was to be sus- 

* Walsingham. Foxe, Acts and Mon, ii. 33. Collier, i, 632, 634, 645. 
f Foxe, Lyndewoode, and Wilkins (vol. iii.), furnish large evidence on this 
subject. 



nifosures. 



THE REACTION. 527 

pected. There were probably enemies to the hierarchy book y. 
who could reconcile themselves to a life of false appear- 
ances, on the plea that the foe with whom they had to deal 
was base and treacherous, and as such had no claim to be 
dealt with otherwise. Such men might long escape detec- 
tion, and the number of such was probably considerable. 
But the conscientious Lollard could hardly exist without 
being known as such, and must have felt that his property, 
and liberty, and life, were constantly at the mercy of any 
malevolent or misguided informer in his neighbourhood. 
So did the clergy perpetuate and augment the disaffection 
of the people. The best and the boldest were almost every- 
where arrayed against them. 

But it must not be supposed that the aims of the dis- Excesses of 
contented were always restricted to safe and reasonable foyers. 
limits. The want of a little more worldly wisdom did 
much, and the persecutions which followed them did more, 
to dispose the passions of some of the sufferers towards the 
most reprehensible maxims and proceedings. The conduct 
of the disaffected was at times such as no government could 
be expected to tolerate. In an outbreak at Abingdon, for 
example, in the reign of Henry VI., in which the monastery 
of that place was assailed, and the clergy greatly menaced, 
the leader of the multitude is said to have declared that he 
would make priests' heads as common as sheep's heads. 
His own head was exposed on London-bridge.* 

But the fault of the government and of the clergy, was This no suf- 
in refusing to distinguish between the conscientious and cuse D for tho 
the merely turbulent — or between the reasonable and un- clerg7 ' 
reasonable in the complaints of the better sort. Opinions 
described as hostile, not only to church authority, but to all 
social order, were exaggerated, and attributed in their exag- 
gerated form to the most moderate reformers, in common 
with the most violent. But, had the mode of attack been 
more discriminating, there is no reason to suppose that the 
result would have been greatly different. As commonly 
happens in such cases, it was found, that to ask for little, 
was to be charged with magnifying trifles, and with foster- 

* Hall, 166. Fabyan, 422. Stowe, 372. 



528 LANCASTER AND TOEK. 

B <S^ 7' ^ n » discontent without reason ; while to ask for much, was 

to be denounced as impious and disloyal. The foregone 

conclusion, in either case, was a conclusion against change. 

In the first parliament under Henry V., the commons 
renewed their complaints against the wealth, and the excep- 
tionable lives, of the clergy. But Chicheley, who had 
then become primate, took alarm, and spared no pains to 
divert the attention of the king and the nation from such 
dangerous questions to the glory of a war with France. 
With a less chivalrous king this policy might not have been 
availing. But with Henry Y. it was successful, and, for a 
while, our history was much influenced by that success. 
oxford?"' 11 ^ n 1^1> tne University of Oxford chose twelve of its 
members to examine the writings of Wycliffe, and the 
report made, presented two hundred and sixty-seven opin- 
ions, taken from those writings, which were described as 
' worthy of fire.' Besides the opinions, said these worthy 
' musters,' which merit extreme condemnation, there are 
many more of like quality ; and they assure the primate, 
that the disciples of the man who had filled the university 
with such doctrines, were so many throughout the province 
of Canterbury, that only by the sharpest process would it 
be possible to cleanse the field of the church from such 
taics. Such was Oxford — so changed from her former self 
— in 1441 ; and such continued to be her state to the close 
of the fifteenth century. In all this, moreover, she was 
what the ecclesiastical power of that time had made her; 
for the clerical influence, which had been kept in some 
check during the last century, had now become exclusive 
and dominant in all her affairs.* 

Such, from various causes, was the revived influence of 
the English clergy at this time, that the luxury, ponrp, and 
pretension of the order had never been greater in our his- 

* Wood's Hist, et Antiq. Univers. Oxon. \. 216, 217. Such was the ignor- 
ance of many of these ecclesiastical persons, that the English convocation, in 
1432, passed a canon which required that no man should be made a bishop or a 
vicar-general who had not taken a degree. — Ducke's Chiclwley, 40. Six years 
later, the University of Oxford laments over the general unfitness of the clergy 
for the discharge of their duties, and urges that no man should be appointed 
to a benefice of anv description who had not graduated. — Ibid. 45. Fuller, ii. 
409-412. 



THE REACTION. 529 

lory. Not a dogma, not a usage, that had been censured in book v. 
the outspoken times of Edward III. or of Richard II., was — - 
surrendered, or in any degree softened. On the contrary, 
so great was the rebound in ecclesiastical affairs, that the 
excesses of the past were all more or less exaggerated. The 
Franciscan learnt to change his undergarment of hair-cloth 
for one of the softest linen ; his waistcord of rope for one 
of silk ; and his barefooted travel for the use of sandals, 
carefully wrought and richly adorned by devout nuns, who 
found agreeable employment in such works of piety. The 
Dominicans innovated after the same manner on the insti- 
tute of their founder. At the same time the houses and 
churches of these orders rose to the splendour of palaces. 
To the hostile criticism sometimses provoked by such ap- 
pearances, it was deemed enough to answer that the pope 
had not taken exception to them ; and that to the Holy See, 
and not to themselves, pertained the wealth deemed so in- 
consistent with their professed renunciation of all ecclesias- 
tical endowments.* But if such was the course of the 
religious orders, it is natural to suppose that such tenden. 
cies were still more conspicuous in the lives of the secular 
clergy. And such was the fact. The palace of the arch- 
bishop of York, brother to the great earl of Warwick, in 
the time of Edward IY., was more Oriental than European 
in its gorgeousness, and in its endless adaptations to the 
luxurious taste of its owner, f Much was sometimes said in 
parliament, and even at court, concerning such ostentation 
and indulgence, as unbecoming in spiritual persons. But 
the passions fed by such means were not to be controlled. 
One of the hardships imposed on the higher clergy in the 
time of Henry Y. was, that they should not travel with gilt 
bridles, nor with more than twenty horses in their train. 
Such restrictions must have been deemed expedient, if not 
necessary, or the scandal of publishing them would never 
have been incurred.^ 

But if an archbishop of York under Edward IY. was so 

* Turner, Hist. Eng. iii. 128, 129. 

f See Fuller's account of an enormous feast given by this prelate. — Church 
Hist. ii. 411. 

% Wilkins, ii. 413. 

Vol. I.— 34 



530 LANCASTER A£T> YORK. 

book v. ^vell known for the princely splendour of his establishment, 

one of his predecessors, who died on the accession of Henry 

VI., was no less notorious for the licentiousness of his life, 
oven to his old age, his contempt of the divine precepts 
being compensated by his zeal against heretics. Our great 
dramatist, too, following old histories, has described the 
death-scene of cardinal Beaufort, bishop of "Winchester, in 
that same reign — how the visions of power which ended in 
weakness, and of wealth, which passed away as a shadow, 
haunted his last hours.* "With such lives in the governing, 
it is easy to imagine the manners which obtained among the 
governed. 

In a petition presented to parliament by the clergy in 
1449, it is stated that many of their order, both religious 
and secular, had been indicted for felony, and the petitioners 
do not blush to pray that no priest charged with rape or fel- 
ony at any time before the 1st of June next, should be account- 
ed guilty, on condition that a noble be paid for each priest 
in the kingdom to the king's exchequer. The answer of the 
king was, let the nobles be voted by the convocations of 
York and Canterbury, and let it so be. The convocations 
voted that the sum should be paid, and the enactment 
pending on that payment became a statute of the realm. f 

We are scarcely surprised, accordingly, that an arch- 
bishop in the year 1455 should be found describing certain 
rectors and vicars as having become openly vagrant and 

* ' This man,' says the Chronicler, ' was son to John of Gaunt, duke of 
Lancaster, descended of an honourable lineage, but more noble in blood than 
notable in learning, high in Btomacb, and huge in countenance, rich above the 
measure of all men, and to few liberal, disdainful of bis kindred, and dreadful to 
his lovers, perferring money before friendship, many things beginning and noth- 
ing preforming. His insatiable covetousness, and hope of long life, made him 
both to forget God, his prince, and himself, in his latter days; for his doctor, 
John Baker, his privy councillor and his chaplain, wrote, that he, lying on his 
bed, said these words: ' Why should I die, having so much riches? If the 
whole realm would save my life, I am able either by policy to get it, or by riches 
to buy it. Fie ! will not death be hired ? Will money do nothing ? When my 
nephew of Bedford died I thought myself half up the wheel. But when my 
other nephew of Gloucester deceased, then I thought myself able to be equal 
with kings — and so thought to increase my treasure in hope to have worn a triple 
crown. But I sec now the world faileth me ; and so am I deceived, praying 
you all to pray for me.' ' — Ball, 210, 211. Such was the character of this man, 
that he was charged with having hired an assassin to murder Henry V., when 
prince Henry, and with having urged the prince to depose his father Henry IV. 
in his lifetime. — Hollinshed, 591. Ducke's Chicheley. 

f Rolls Pari. v. 153. Statutes, i. 352, 



THE REACTION. 531 

dissolute, wandering through the kingdom in search of gain, book v. 

neglecting their spiritual duties, wasting their revenues, 

allowing their houses, and even their churches, to fall into 
decay, giving themselves to feasting, drunkenness, fornica- 
tion, and other vices, being often, not only unskilled in the 
work of teaching, but so ignorant as to be incapable of such 
service.* Some ten years later, the archbishop of York 
lays open a similar state of things as existing in his prov- 
ince, and enjoins that no clergyman should be present at 
forbidden sports and plays, should frequent taverns, or be 
seen in the company of lewd women, f To expect great 
purity of manners in an opulent establishment in such times 
would be unreasonable. But the facts, and the language, 
we have adduced, suggest that the corruption in those days 
must have been deep and general, much beyond the ordi- 
nary in such cases. 

That there were churchmen who condemned these evils, 
may be accepted as evidence that the sense of propriety was 
not wholly extinct in that quarter. But the effect of such 
admonitions seems to have borne too near a resemblance to 
that usually produced by royal proclamations against vice. 
The rebuke was accepted, but amendment was postponed. 

In the face of such facts it will not be supposed that Decline of 
learning was in a very satisfactory condition. We have seen 
how Oxford could acquit herself in regard to the doctrine 
and disciples of Wycliffe in 1441. At that time, the merid- 
ian of Oxford seems hardly distinguishable from that of 
Salamanca or Madrid in their worst days. We feel little 
surprised, accordingly, when we find an ex-chancellor of 
Oxford complaining heavily, in 1455, of the decay of learn- 
ing in that university. The causes of this state of things 
are largely enumerated, such as the liberty of non-residence, 
the custom of excessive pluralities, the open sale of univer- 
sity degrees to the incompetent and unworthy, and the fre- 
quent promotion of such men by papal authority, or by 
court and family influence. Inducement to study was in 
this manner superseded, and the parishes of England were 
filled with men so wanting in fitness for their office, that 

* Wilkins, Con. iii. 373, 374. f Ibid. 



532 



LANCASTER AND TORE. 



BOOK V. 
Chap. 1. 



The 
English 
aristocracy 
and the 
Civil War. 



' the country was overspread with ignorance.' * The relig 
ious houses added greatly to these disorders, by possessing 
themselves of livings as endowments, and by showing them- 
selves much more concerned about the tithe than about the 
teaching. The foundations in Oxford had become so poor, 
that scholars often became travelling mendicants to obtain 
the means of subsistence — the chancellor himself, in his 
pity for their necessities, giving them certificates in that 
capacity. Two of these begging scholars made their call at 
the castle-gate of a nobleman. Their credentials stated, 
that, among other claims to public sympathy and favour, 
the bearers possessed the gift of poesy. "Whereupon the 
baron instructed his servants to take the strangers to the 
well, and placing one in one bucket and his companion in 
the other, to let them drop alternately into the water until 
each should have composed a suitable verse on this novelty 
in his experience. The baron and his companions, it is 
said, made themselves exceedingly merry over this exhibi- 
tion, and the scholars, having each furnished the verse 
required from him, were allowed to depart. f That brutal- 
ity of this sort was a common thing we do not suppose, but 
that such a proceeding should have taken place at all, sug- 
gests much as to the status of the man of letters, and the con- 
dition of society about him in those days. 

It would be well if even such indications of feeling on 
the part of the English nobility in the fifteenth century 
were the worst to be recorded of them. But such is not 
the case. Their coarseness, and ignorance of letters, arc 
among the most venial of their faults, 
in their character are of a darker and 
scription. 

With the premature death of Henry V. came the minor- 
ity, and the feeble sway, of Henry YI. ; and from the acces- 
sion of Henry YI. to the death of Kichard III. — an interval 
of nearly half a century — the supreme power in England 
became a prize to be contended for by a succession of oppo- 
site factions. In those factions there were, as usual, the 



The strong features 



more 



revolting 



de- 



* Wood'a Antiq. Univcr. Oxon. lib. i. 220. 
f Wood's Hist. Univer. Oxon. 225. 



THE REACTION. 533 

leaders and the led : but the absence of principle, of hon- book v. 

/» i . Chap. 1. 

our, of humanity, by which these interminable combina- 

tions on either side were characterized, was such as to show, 
that for a time at least, there was nothing in the maxims or 
in the spirit of Machiavel that might not find a large home in 
England. The irregular accession of Henry IV. appears to 
have done much to destroy the divinity which is said to be 
about the person of a king. Henceforth, sovereignty, like 
any other elevation, might be seized by the hand of the 
strong, according to circumstances ; and each aspirant had 
his followers, who hoped to share in the spoil consequent on 
his success. In pursuit of this object, the ties of gratitude, 
of friendship, of nature, all became as nothing. So intense 
had the passions of men become, that restraint was hardly 
thought of, except as seen to be necessary to success. Every 
struggle became a struggle, not merely for office or emolu- 
ment, but for life or death. Men had become to so fright- 
ful an extent unscrupulous and untrustworthy, that the 
victors, whether in the court or in the field, never deemed 
themselves safe until assured that the vanquished were no 
more. When court intrigue broke out into open war, the 
cry of the opposing forces commonly was — no quarter ; and 
those who were so unhappy as to become captives, became 
such to be butchered in cold blood, often amidst cruel 
taunts and mockings. Englishmen seemed to live, not to" 
feel that they had really a country, but simply to follow 
their chiefs, and to do their bidding, however atrocious. In 
these strifes, their hatred of each other was more bitter than 
they had ever manifested towards a foreign enemy. Pas- 
sions are hereditary, and the war passion through the nation, 
seems by this time to have become so strong from indul- 
gence, that, in the absence of an outlet abroad, it broke forth 
in demoniacal force at home. The nobles were proud of 
their high blood, of their territorial wealth, of their chival- 
rous courage, and of their supposed capacity to judge of 
affairs, and to act in relation to them. But to mental cul- 
ture, and to the refinements which spring from it, they were 
marvellously indifferent. The earl of "Worcester and Lord 
Rivers were exceptions to this description ; but both were 



534 LANCASTER AND Y0KK. 

book v. amonor those who perished under the hand of the execu- 

Chap. 1. » x 

tioner. Of the former, Caxton writes, — ' The axe then did 

at one blow cut off more learning than was in the heads of 
all the surviving nobility ;' and Caxton knew the men of 
whom he thus spoke. Devoid of the slightest tincture of 
letter.-, their home was with their field sports and their ten- 
antry, or with the retainers who fed upon their venison, 
and whose Homeric feastings often left their heads too light 
in the evening to be well at ease in the morning. We might 
have supposed that the unsettledness, the barbarism, and the 
miseries which were diffused by Buch tastes and habits 
would have sufficed to teach men the needed lesson in less 
than half a century. But it was not so. So terrible was 
the scourge which thus fell on all the great families, that 

when the first Tudor ascended the throne, he found himself 
at the head of a parliament which included a House of 

Commons, hut which could hardly he Baid to retain a peer- 
age. Apart from the clergy, the Upper House had become 
a faint shadow of its former Belf. 

Of course, the men who engaged in these contentions, 
did their best toassigD plausible reasons in support of them, 
though the reasons alleged were often far from being the 
real spring of their actions. In the reign of Henry VI., 
those who governed in the place of the king were accused 
of governing corruptly, and the government and the church 
were .-aid to be leagued together to infringe the liberty of 
the subject, and t<» persecute religious opinion. When the 
king came to years, and married Margaret of Anjou, the 
masculine and haughty temper of the queen caused the lines 
which separated between faction and faction to become 
stronger, until civil war, and the dethronement of the house 
of Lancaster in favour of the house of York was the result. 
Edward IV., who owed his sovereignty to the revolution 
thus brought about by the great earl of Warwick, could 
hardly feel himself a king in the presence of the authority 
assumed by that famous king-maker. His secret marriage 
with a subject, and one not connected with the great fam- 
ilies ; and his disposition to elevate other families, especially 
the family of his queen, to counterbalance the influence of 



THE REACTION. 535 

"Warwick and his adherents, led to feud, to civil war, and B / ? 0K J- 

Chap. 1. 

to a temporary restoration of the dethroned Henry. But 

Edward IV., though a Sardanapalus in time of peace, could 
become a sage and a hero in the time of war. He won his way 
back to the throne from which he had been expelled, num- 
bering Warwick himself among the slain. What Warwick 
had been to Edward IV. the powerful duke of Buckingham 
became to Richard III. He had favoured the elevation of 
Richard, but his expectations became great, and he perished 
in attempting to demolish the work of his own hands. And 
it is impossible to say how long this succession of tragedies 
— of foul frauds and dark deeds — would have continued, 
had not the rival claims of the houses of York and Lancas- 
ter been made to meet in the person of Henry VII., and had 
not the character of that monarch been such as it has be- 
come in history. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE DAM'X. 



BOOK V. 
CnAr. 2. 

The 
Enslish 
parliament 
under the 
Lancas- 
trians and 
Yorkists. 



THE jealousies, and the ultimate strifes between the 
houses of Lancaster and York, were not favourable to 
regularity in anything ; and the general onsettledness of 
affairs, during that period, is reflected in our parliamentary 
history. But the rivalries which were afoot made each 
party desirous to secure adherents, and from this cause, 
more than from enlightened considerations, the power of the 
English parliament may he said to have increased, rather 
than to have diminished, during the fifteenth century. The 
title of the Lancastrians was well known to be a parliamen- 
tary title ; and if the Yorkists based their claim on the prin- 
ciple of legitimacy, they were careful to strengthen their 
hold on the popular feeling by affecting to discountenance 
the abitrary and intolerant policy of the rival dyasty. It is 
in consonance with these facts, that we find the populace, 
and the more wealthy among the commonalty, especially in 
London and the adjacent counties, with the Yorkists. Ed- 
ward IV. indeed, while he had fair words for the House of 
Commons, was not a prince to appreciate such institutions. 
The records of parliament during his reign are singularly 
meagre and unsatisfactory. "We know, however, that, in 
common with all the leaders of his times, he could strain 
the law of treason to serve his purpose ; and that he intro- 
duced the bad custom of calling upon his subjects to furnish 
him with loans under the new name of ' benevolences,' 
evading by this means the authority of parliament in regard 
to taxation. Had his life been prolonged, he would have 
been compelled to desist from that course. Immediately 



THE DAWK. 537 

after his decease, the commons protested, in strong and book v. 

even bitter terms, against his proceedings in this form, and 

Richard III. promised to avoid such evil precedents.* We 
have seen something of the firmness with which the com- 
mons remonstrated against both civil and ecclesiastical 
grievances under Henry IV. and Henry V. ; and if such 
symptoms of public feeling are of less frequent occurrence in 
the next two reigns, we have no reason to suppose that the 
feeling abroad had ceased to be the same. Hence, if settled 
times are to come, the landmarks of the constitution may 
be said to be safe, and patriotic men may hope to take their 
stand upon them. 

But at present the times are not settled. Through this 
whole century there is a ferment of religious feeling, allied 
more or less with the new religious opinions, which is not 
to be allayed. The party on the side of the past is strong, 
but the party on the side of something different from the 
past is also strong, and promises to become stronger. 

The old jealousy between the clergy and the religious The secular 
orders was perpetuated and much embittered through this saii^by* 
period. The mendicant orders, especially the Franciscans, gim™ " 
continued their assaults on the doctrine of Wycliffe. ° r 
Treatise after treatise was published on that subject. f But, 
strange to say, this did not prevent these disputants from 
using the weapons of the reformers when assailing the secu- 
lar clergy. They denounced, almost in the terms of "Wyc- 
liffe, the ' endowing ' of the church, as the great source of 
her corruption. In 1425, one William Russell, at the head 
of a Franciscan convent in London, denied the divine au- 
thority of tithes, and insisted that they ought not to be paid 
to the parochial clergy. They might rest on human law, 
or on long custom, but according to the Scripture, they 
should be left to be applied to pious or charitable uses, at 

* Rot. Pari. vi. 193, 241. 1 Ric. III. c. 2. The clergy, in the end, came 
to be favourable to the ascendency of the Yorkists ; but it was in consequence 
of the crimes and devastations perpetrated by the Lancastrians from the north, 
with the real or apparent connivance of Queen Margaret. They did not take 
much part in affairs during the civil wars. 

f Gualter Dysse, Richard Maydesley, and R. Lanynfans, are among the 
names mentioned frequently, but the first place in this polemical list must be 
assigned to Netter, better known as Thomas Walden. 



538 LANCASTER AND YOEK. 

^nl? J' tne w *^ °^ tue donor. Great excitement was produced by 

this teaching. But such were the speculations which were 

being diffused within the enclosure of the church, and 
which came from time to time to the surface.* 

Forty years later, a Carmelite friar, named Parker, 
preached in St. Paul's, that the only revenue of the clergy 
should consist in the voluntary offerings of the faithful — 
that Christ and his apostles sought no other. On the fol- 
lowing Sunday, a doctor of reputation assailed these posi- 
tions in a discourse from the same pulpit. Subsequently, 
another Carmelite, the master of a convent, undertook the 
defence of the impugned doctrine, insisting that his brother 
Carmelite, who had preceded him, had simply delivered the 
doctrine of Scripture. The preacher concluded by announc- 
ing, that the subject would be further discussed in his 
school on the following Friday. The discussion of Friday 
was resumed on the next Sunday. Those who had learnt 
this doctrine from another source, looked on, as we may 
suppose, with no little interest. Many among the people 
proclaimed themselves believers in the Carmelite tenets. 

An eloquent preacher was engaged by the clergy to show, 
that if our Lord accepted the willing offerings of the people, 
He did not solicit them in the manner of the mendicants. 
But an able Dominican now entered the lists, and having 
delivered himself with much effect in the cathedral, he in- 
vited the people to attend the Carmelite chapel in the after- 
noon, where a venerable doctor would deliver his judgment 
on the question. Notices were posted on the church doors. 
Crowds made their way to the chapel ; and John Mylverton 
himself, provincial of the order of the Carmelites, ascended 

* Wilkins, Con. iii. 483-489. Russell was required by convocation to re- 
cant, but the day before that fixed for his recantation he made his escape from 
the kingdom. His doctrine was condemned by the University of Oxford ; and 
an oath was exact ed from all Btudenta admitted to degrees requiring the renun- 
ciation of Russell's opinions. This oath remained in force until 1664. — Duck's 
Life of Chicheley. Wood's Antiq. Vhiver. Oxon. i. - J1<», 211. Register, 
Cnicheley, 35. One remarkable proof of the prevalence of such tenets is fur- 
nished by the conduct of Pain, who was sent as a delegate by the English convo- 
cation to the Council of Basle. Pain was so bold as to argue before the council 
against the possession of estates, or of temporal jurisdiction by the clergy. 
Polemar, a Spanish archdeacon, replied to him at great length, but did not con 
vince him. ' Tis evident,' says Collier, ' that Pain was a man of learning, and 
one of the chief of the Wycliffite party.' — i. 661-663. 



THE DAWN. 539 

the pulpit. He said that he had heard that one of his boo* J- 

brethren had been much defamed, charged with error and 

blasphemy. But he stood there prepared to show that the 
doctrine so described was the doctrine of the Scripture and 
of the fathers. His manner was grave, and most earnest. 
The auditory, especially the common people, were greatly 
moved by it. The archbishop of Canterbury, who made 
report of these proceedings to the pope, soliciting his advice 
and help, says, ' We know that some thought, and others 
were heard to say, if Christ was so poor, why should his 
followers, the pope, the cardinals, the archbishops, bishops, 
and abbots, own such large possessions. It is clear that 
priests should live on offerings freely made to them, that 
the church became apostate from the day on which she was 
endowed, and that good service would be done to religion 
and to the nation if churchmen were stripped of their 
wealth, and left in this matter to follow their Lord and his 
apostles.' So strong, and so general, was this feeling, that 
it was with difficulty, we are told, that the people were 
restrained from breaking out into open insurrection. As 
will be expected, the primate did not solicit the aid of the 
pontiff in vain. Mylverton was summoned to Rome, and 
passed two years in one of the dungeons of St. Angelo. 
But so did opinion in the direction of ecclesiastical change 
continue to do its work in England during the fifteenth 
century.* 

In this teaching of the mendicant orders there was noth- 
ing strictly new. Their institutes rested on this doctrine 
concerning religious endowments, as implied if not ex- 
pressed. But the times had changed. A tenet which had 
been accounted harmless in the thirteenth century, becomes 
something very different in the fifteenth. The mendicants 
might follow their own rule in this particular ; but that 
they should impugn the contrary rule of the endowed 
clergy was felt to be a grave matter. It was all very well 
to flank, or supplement, the parochial clergy with these 
voluntary orders. But that the clergy themselves should 
become voluntaries, was not to be conceded for a moment. 

* MS. Cotton Library, Titus D. 10, p. 185 et seq. Cited in Turner, iii. 132. 



540 LAKCASTEE AND YORK. 

book v. Nor were the mendicants the only ecclesiastics whose 
— — labours served to impair the foundations of the existing svs- 

Rcformed . © J 

doctrine tern. Tlie third volume of "Wikins' Councils furnishes many 

avowed by . . t v 

someofttio instances oi endowed clergymen embracing the doctrine of 

secular _ l ' 

dergy. the mendicants concerning the revenues of their order, and 
holding and inculcating opinions widely at variance with 
the faith and usage of their church. They said much to 
discourage the adoration of the cross, the worship of images, 
and prayers to saints. These usages were all described as 
savouring of idolatry. They denied that the bread in the 
encharist ever ceased to be bread. "While opposed to re- 
ligion.- endowments, they condemned the begging customs 
of the friars. In the spirit of Wycliffe, they condemned the 
religions orders altogether, as being Institutes of man, which 
reflected on the institutes of Christ as wanting in adaptation 
to the in. •.!> of the church. They spoke of the Bible as the 
only pure and infallible authority in regard to religion, and 
urged the people to trust in the promise of (b>d as there 
given them, to the exclusion of all other dependence. Pil- 
grimages were worse than useless, the only true pilgrimage 
being to do the commandments of God. The most conspicu- 
ous among the clergy who Buffered during this interval, as 
holding opinions more or less of this complexion, was the de- 
vout and conscientious Reginald Peacock, successively bishop 
of St. Asaph and ( Shichester. Among his patrons were men 
of the first rank ; but alter much effort, his enemies pre- 
vailed against him, and the influence of his friends could do 
no more than abate the severity of the sentence which sent 
him from his episcopal residence to a prison. His history 
ami Bufferings belong to the latter half of the fifteenth ecn- 
tnrv. Like many more in those evil times, he made a sort 
of recantation, and died unhappily as the consequence.* 
But if curates, and incumbents, and even bishops, are 

* Bale, Cent. VIII. Godwin in Episc. Ocettretu. Collier, i. 674-676. 
Sec Lcwis'8 Life and Sufferings of Reginald Peacock. Two priests of the 
diocese of Lincoln, named Robert Hake and Thomas Drayton, were BUmmoned 
before a synod in 1425, and charged with refusing to kneel to a crucifix, with 
having hooks in their possession opposed to the doctrine of transubstantiation, 
and with affirming that monastic orders and auricular confession were inven- 
tions of the devil, &c. &c. Similar proceedings took place in the convocation of 
1429. 



THE DAWN. 541 

found to be thus infected with the new opinions, we may B ®£^ J- 
readily imagine that the portion of the laity open to such Th J^" 
impressions would be much greater. In grave affairs, the ^j°° s e t0 
upper ranks move much more cautiously than the lower, thekfty 8 
They see further into consequences, and have more at stake. 
We do not expect, accordingly, even in the most favourable 
times, to see much movement in that quarter, until the ten- 
dencies lower down have become ripe for change ; and from 
what we have seen of the character of English aristocracy 
in the age under review, anything like an enlightened re- 
ligious earnestness was the last thing to be expected from 
them. But it is manifest from the language of the ruling 
churchmen in this century, that they regarded the towns- 
people, and the commonalty at large, as adherents to the 
new learning, and as disposed to favour it in secret, if not 
prepared to avow their attachment to it openly. Such was 
no doubt to a great extent the fact. So many works were 
written setting forth the views of the reformers in the lan- 
guage of the people, that it became one of the pressing ques- 
tions put to suspected and accused persons — have you in 
your possession any books written in English ; have you 
read such books, have you any knowledge of such books, 
or of persons having any such knowledge % 

One popular work of this description bore the name of 
the Lantern of Light. It was written some time before the 
middle of this century. It described the pope as Anti- 
christ ; as the head of the beast, with the prelates as the 
body, and the religious orders as the tail. Papal decrees 
it declared to be of no sort of authority. Indulgences were 
a delusion. Pilgrimages were a demoralizing superstition. 
Spiritual obedience to clergymen who failed in their spiritual 
duties was a sin. The attempts made by the bishops to 
restrict the office of preaching to their own licensed priests 
marked them as the tools of Antichrist. It was the duty of 
the clergy to live in modest houses, and after a modest 
fashion ; and to leave the decorating of their holy things 
with silver and gold, and their many chantings, for the 
study of the Scriptures, and the preaching of the Gospel. 
The reason, says the book, why men who entertain such 



542 



LANCASTER AND YORK. 



BOOK V. 
Chap. 2. 



Some en- 
courage- 
ment given 
to learning. 



views are so bitterly persecuted, is simply that tlie secular 
clergy may retain their possessions, and that the mendicants 
may have the mind of the people at their disposal, and turn 
it to their uses. 

This hook was found in the possession of a foil-monger 
named Claydon, living in St. Martin's-lane, near Aldersgate. 
This man had already suffered six years' confinement in the 
hell-pits which prisons then were, for his opinions, two 
years in Conway Castle, and four in the Fleet. His ser- 
vants were summoned to give evidence against him. One 
of these deposed that the Lantern of L'«<jl<i was often read 
on festival days before the family; the other said that he 
was present when the author, named John Greene, brought 
the book to his master, and he heard them converse about it. 
Claydon, in full memory of the dungeons of Conway Castle 
and the Fleet, when questioned concerning the treatise, 
answered that it contained things which he believed to be 
good for his bouI. Be perished at the stake in Bmithfield.* 

Claydon was one of a class. Had then- been men in 
power, in those days, disposed and able to shield Mich per- 
sons, we have evidence enough to show that their numbers 
would have been found to be much greater than is now 
known to history. Conscientiousness may be mistaken, bnt 
without it there can be no greatness in a people. The 
country which has had its age of Wveliffe and Chancer, 
must have something better still in the distance. Amidst 
all the disorders of this century, the commerce and the 
wealth of the nation continued to increase; and in our his- 
tory, these elements of progress have been inseparable from 
the progress of popular intelligence and freedom. f 

Among the few signs of intellectual life in England in 
the fifteenth century, we may reckon the additions made to 
the foundations of Oxford and Cambridge. In Oxford, 
Lincoln College was founded by the joint liberality of 
Richard Fleming and Thomas Rotherham, who were suc- 
cessively bishops of Lincoln. All Souls' owed its origin to 
the liberality of archbishop Chicheley ; and Magdalen 



- Wilkins, Con. iii. 372-374, 396, 398, 399. 
f Anderson's. Hist. Com. i. bk. iii. 



THE DAWN. 543 

College to that of Wayneflete, bishop of Winchester, and book J- 

lord chancellor. During the same period King's College, 

Cambridge, and Eton College, near Windsor, were founded 
by the munificence of Henry VI., together with Queen's 
College, in the same university, by Margaret of Anjou, the 
queen of that monarch. Cambridge was further befriended 
by Robert Woodlark, provost of Eton, the founder of 
Catherine Hall.* 

All these offerings in aid of the culture of the nation 
came, it Will be seen, from the clergy, with the exception 
of those from Henry YI. and his consort. 

Humphrey duke of Gloucester was about the same time The duke 
a great patron of letters. He founded a divinity school and cester. 
public library in Oxford. He presented a library of 600 
volumes to the university, 120 of which are said to have 
been valued at 1,000Z. in the money of that time. These 
volumes consisted of the most splendid and costly copies 
that could be procured, finely written on vellum, and richly 
embellished with miniatures and illuminations. Amon°: 
them was a translation into French of Ovid's Metamorpho- 
ses. In fact, the duke did not confine his patronage to 
English scholars. Frenchmen and Italians shared in his 
bounty. Several eminent scholars were employed by him 
in transcribing valuable works, and in translating works 
from Greek into Latin and English. The library was opened 
in USO.f 

Lord Tiptoft, created earl of Worcester bv Henrv VI. Th0 oarl ot 

^Vorcestcr 

has been mentioned as a scholar, and a lover of books. He 
contributed largely to the public library of the University 
of Oxford. He visited Jerusalem, and was resident for 
some years in Venice and Padua. In the latter places he 
purchased many manuscript works. Subsequently, he made 
some stay in Rome, that he might explore in the Vatican 
library. He there delivered a Latin oration, on some pub- 
lic occasion, before iEneas Sylvius, then Pius II., and his 
holiness is said to have shed tears of delight as he listened. 

* Wood, Hist. Univer. Ox. 159 et seq. Fuller, Mist. Camb. 73 et seq. 
•j- Wartoa On Introd. of Learning into England, p. cxiii. Wood, Hist. 
Univer. Oxon. 



544 LANCASTER AND TOKK. 

book v. Hi s lordship was, further, a great patron of Caxton the 

printer. But the earl of Worcester was one of the many 

nobles who perished in the civil war. He was beheaded in 
1470, in the forty-second year of his age, by command of 
the earl of "Warwick, who had then taken the side of Henry 
VI., and had restored him to the throne. As the earl of 
Worcester was the only man so punished in connexion witli 
that revolution, even in those sanguinary times, tin.- pre- 
sumption is strong, that he had become in some special 
sense an offender. We have reason to fear that the human- 
izing tendency of a love of letters had been neutralized in 
his case by other passions. He joined the Yorkists under 
Edward IV. : but he had been a zealous Lancastrian, and is 
said to have disgraced one of the triumphs of his party by 
excessive cruelty. Twenty gentlemen and noblemen arc 
said to have been impair.! by his order. The popular 
hatred gave him the name of the ' butcher.'* It is a mis- 
take to suppose that there is any necessary connexion be- 
tween a taste tor intellectual pleasures and virtuous affec- 
tions. The besl educated, and the most cultivated, of our 
kings during the fifteenth century, was Richard III. As a 
rule our nature i- Boftened and elevated by the study of the 
humanities, bul history shows a frightful margin of excep- 
tions to this rule— in tact we meet with such ourselves c\ ery 

day.f 

Eari Rivers. Earl Rivers, formerly Anthony W Iville and Lord 

Scale-, was brother to the Queen of Edward IV. England 

did not contain a braver or a more accomplished knight. 

* Warkworth, Chronicle, ConHn. <'r<>iil. Stowc. Caxton speaks well of 
his patron, !><it his eviden reighed by other authorities. Walpole's 

declamation on this subject is of no value. — liorjal and Noble Authors, ii. 
59— e. 7. Dugdale's Baronage, ii. 41. Leland's De Script. Brit. -175 et seq. 

| In 1111, Worcester, aa Sir John Tiptoft, made an impassioned speech in 
parliament against the Lollards. The effect was, that the lords presented a 
memorial to the king, Btating that certain persons, by the instigation of the 
Enemy, wen- endeavouring 'in public sermons, as well as in conventicles, and 
in secret places called schools,' to move the kingdom to lay hands on the wealth 
of the clergy. The memorialists remind his majesty, that, of course, the next 
step would be to lay hands on the possessions of temporal lords, whose rights in 
relation to property were by no means more sacred than those of the clergy; 
and they accordingly pray the king, that a stringent law may lie passed to put an 
end to the promulgation of such opinions. — Fuller's Church /fist. bk. iv. 162. 
The Lancastrians, as we have seen, won the clergy by this policy, but they exas- 
perated the people. 



THE DAWN. 545 

As Lord Scales, he went through a great passage of arms book J 

with the famous Anthony the Bastard of Normandy, in the *" 

presence of the court and the populace in Smithfield, and 
was the victor. The Earl of Worcester presided on that 
occasion as lord high constable. Earl Rivers was also a 
patron of Caxton, and the translator of several works from 
the French, which are among the earliest issued from Cax- 
ton's press. This nobleman, too, perished on the block, 
when little more than forty years of age, by command of 
the then Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III.* 

With these friends of authors, and munificent patrons Lord Lit- 

r tleton. 

of literature, mention should be made of two really learned 
men of this century — Littleton and Fortescue. Sir Thomas 
Littleton was the son of a private gentleman in Devonshire. 
Having practised some time at the bar, he became reader 
in the Inner Temple. The inns of courts are said to have 
been crowded with students in this century, though few, it 
would seem, rose to eminence. In 1455, Henry YI. raised 
Littleton to the office of judge of the Marshalsea court. In 
the following year he became judge of the Common Pleas. 
He saw the crown pass from Henry VI. to more than 
one successor ; but, amidst the storm and change of the 
times, Littleton was allowed to retain his position undis- 
turbed. It was not necessary, in administering the law as 
between subject and subject, that he should become con- 
spicuous as a politician. His great work on tenures is well 
known to all law students as the basis of the later work 
entitled, Coke tipon Littleton.^ 

Sir John Fortescue was the son of Sir Henry Fortescue, sir John 

• i»-r-i-in«-r-ii l Fortescue. 

lord chief justice of Ireland. Sir John became reader at 
Lincoln's Inn. Students crowded to hear his lectures, and 
gave him loud proof of their admiration. In 1430 he was 
made sergeant-at-law ; in 1442 chief justice. Having filled 
this high office with great reputation for nearly twenty 
years, he shared the exile of the family of Henry YI. and 
was attainted of treason. During his residence in France 
queen Margaret often consulted him on her affairs, but his 

* Biographia Brit. ii. Walpole, Royal and Noble Authors, i. 67 et seq. 
\ Biographia Brit. v. De Laudibus Legum Anglia;, c. 49. 

Vol. I.— 35 



546 LANCASTER ANTD YOKE. 

^ap. I' cm ' c f employment was in superintending the education of 

1 her son prince Edward. It was for the instruction of that 

prince that Fortescue wrote his De Laudibus Legum Anglice. 
This treatise describes the constitution of England as con- 
sisting in a monarchy limited by law, and as being thus 
distinguished from all absolute monarchies. Sir John was 
present at the fatal battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. The 
victory of that day destroyed the last hope of the Lancas- 
trians. The life of the chief justice was spared. Subse- 
quently he was restored to liberty, and probably to the 
possession of his forfeited property. In the hope of doing 
something towards putting an end to a contest which had 
now become apparently useless, Fortescue wrote a tract in 
defence of the title of Edward IV. Another of his publica- 
tions, of high value, was a treatise on the Diffi /'< nee between 
an Absolute and " LimiU </ Monarchy. His former treatise, 
expository of the same principles, was written in Latin, and 
designed for the use of prince Edward the Lancastrian ; this 
work was written in English, and was designed for the use 
of Edward IV. There might lie disputes concerning who 
should be kin-- ; but, in the j u< Iginent of Sir John Fortescue, 
there could be no dispute about the fact that the king of 
England is a king, who, in the language of Bracton, and in 
the language of our statutes, is to govern, not according to 
his pleasure, but according to law. The publication of the 
treatises of this able and virtuous judge lias done much to- 
wards settling the question concerning the alleged innova- 
tions upon the English Constitution on the part of the 
Tudors and Stuarts. Sir John Fortescue lived to be ninety 
years of age. AVe should add, that Sir John's last-men- 
tioned treatise furnishes an admirable specimen of the 
power of our language in the latter half of the fifteenth cen- 
tury.* 

* See the memoir in the Biographia Britannica, vol. iii. 

1 A king of England,' writes Fortescue, ' cannot at his pleasure make any 
alterations in the laws of the land, for the nature of his government is not only 
regal, but political. Had it been merely regal, he would have a power to make 
what innovations and alterations he pleased in the laws of the kingdom, to 
impose tallages and other hardships upon the people, whether they would or no, 
without their consent ; which sort of government the civil laws point out, when 
they declare quod principi placuit, legit habct vigorem. But it is much other- 



THE DAWN. 



547 



Our historical literature during the fifteenth century is book v. 

singularly poor. "Walsingham, Otterburne, "Whethamstede, 

Elmham, Titus Livius, "William of "Worcester, Bouse, and 
Fabian belong to this period : but their narratives are of 
no value except as they relate to contemporary matters, and 
even there the assistance to be derived from them is often 
unsatisfactory. "Walsingham and Fabian are the most use- 
ful. Fabian wrote in English, the rest in indifferent Latin. 

Nor was the science of this century in a better condi- state of 
tion than its literature. "When Henry Y. invaded France, 
Thomas Morstede was the only fully qualified surgeon in 
his train. Morstede engaged fifteen assistants. But while 
his own pay was not more than that of a man-at-arms, his 
assistants were classed in that respect with ordinary archers, 
and some of them were required to use the bow. On the 
second invasion, it was found necessary to press the assist- 

wise with a king whose government is political, because he can neither make any 
alteration or change in the laws of the realm, without the consent of his sub- 
jects, nor burthen them against their wills with strange impositions, so that a 
people governed by such laws as are made by their own consent and approbation 
enjoy their properties securely, and without the hazard of being deprived of 
them, either by the king or any other. The same thing may be effected under 
an absolute prince, provided he do not degenerate into the tyrant. Of such a 
prince, Aristotle, in the third of his Politics, says, ' It is better for a city to be 
governed by a good man, than by good laws.' But because it does not always 
happen that the person presiding over a people is so qualified, St. Thomas, in 
the book which he writ to the king of Cyprus, Be Regimine Principum, wishes 
that a kingdom could be so instituted as that the king might not be at liberty to 
tyrannize over his people ; which only comes to pass in the present case ; that 
is when the sovereign power is restrained by political laws. Rejoice, therefore, 
my good prince, that such is the law of the kingdom to which you are to inherit, 
because it will afford both to yourself and subjects the greatest security and satis- 
faction.'— Be Laudibus Legum Anglic^ c. 9. Many other passages of this 
complexion might be adduced. In one instance Sir John describes the English 
constitution as originating in compact, and proceeds to set forth its principles 
according to that view. — Ibid. c. 12. Hallam, iii. 228, 229. 

I give an extract from the English treatise, as showing what the English lan- 
guage was in the hands of the author, as well as on account of what it contains. 
' In Flanders and other Lordscippis of the Duke of Biirgoync downward, he 
[the King of France] taketh certeyn Imposicions made by hymself upon every 
Oxe every Schepe, and upon other thyngs sould, and also upon every Vessel of 
Wyne, every Barell of Beer, and other Vytayls sould in his Lordschip, which is 
no litill Revenue to hym yerely : but yet he doth it magre the People, which 
God defend that the Kyng our Soveryng Lord schuld do upn his People, without 
their Graunts and Assents. Nevertheless with their Assents, such manner of 
Subsydye, if ther could not be found a better Meane of the encreasing ot the 
Kyngs Revenuz, were not umreasonable. For theryn, and yn the Gable of Salt, 
every Man schal bere the charge therin equally. But yet I would not, that such 
a new Custome and Charge were put upon the People, in our Soveryng Lords 
dayes, with which his Progenitors chargyd them never, if a better and more con- 
venient way could be found.' 



54:8 LANCASTER AND YORK. 

B J? 0K J- ants into the service. It must be evident, that in those 

Chap. 2. ' 

armies, the deaths which resulted from the weapons of the 

enemy, would be few compared with those which must have 
taken place from the want of due surgical aid. The death 
of the king himself would seem to have been among the 
effects of this scientific ignorance. 

Under Henry IV". a law was passed which forbade the 
attempts made to transmute inferior substances into gold, 
under heavy penalties. By some, this law was framed to 
prevent a waste of the precious metals, and of precious 
stones, in experiments which it was believed must be fruit- 
less. By others, the penalty was directed against the al- 
Leged magic of such practices. And this difference of judg- 
ment continued to prevail concerning such attempts. In 
the imagination of the people, the sole use of mathematics 
was to help the astrologer; and they knew not how to 
separate the experiments of the chemist from the extrava- 
gance of the alchemist. Such scholars were wizards, and 
their wive- and daughters were supposed to be wise in their 
Becrets. Many who were above the commonalty shared in 
this credulity, and were willing to believe that such studies 
led to great mysteries which might be made to Bubserve the 
intrigues to which their ambition prompted them. That 
such persons Bhould be found in the court of Henry YI. and 

of his successors, will excite no wonder, if we call to mind 

the faith in such delusions which prevailed in the court of 
France more than a century later, and the facts of this na- 
ture which are mixed up with the court history of our own 
James I. and with certain trials for witchcraft even later 

still. Minds which were superior to all faith of this descrip- 
tion, as the result of general culture, were exceptions to the 
mass. Religion gave this superiority to some, religious 
scepticism suggested the same conclusion to others. Henry 
YI. had learned to believe it possible, that the elixir of life 
and the philosopher's stone might be discovered ; but he 
maintained that the discovery would come, not from the 
intervention of malignant powers, but from a benignant 
Providence, as a reward on human ingenuity and labour. 
In this belief the pious king issued a proclamation giving 



THE DAWN. 



549 



warrant to John Fauceby, Jobn Kirkeby, and Jolin Kayny, book ▼• 
' to investigate, begin, prosecute, and perfect the aforesaid 
medicine, according to their own discretion, and the pre- 
cepts of ancient sages, and also to transmute other metals 
into true gold and silver.'* Parliament rescinded the 
statute of Henry IV. and gave the authority of law to this 
proclamation. 

The art of printing, as may be supposed, did not escape The intro- 
the suspicions which fell, in those times of ignorance, on gjg«- 
the science of mathematics and chemistry. But it was in 
Germany and the Low Countries, more than in England, 
that the black art was associated with the first use of the 
printer's type. The earliest experiments in printing on the 
Continent may be traced to about the year 1430 ; the ear- 
liest specimen in this country did not appear until 1474, or 
possibly 1477. That John Caxton of the Mercers' Com- 
pany in London was our first printer, is beyond reasonable 
doubt. Caxton was not only a man of business but a man 
of travel, one of those ingenious and honest traders who 
earn their right to stand before kings. He was deputed by 
Edward IV. to negotiate a commercial treaty with the 
Duke of Burgundy, and was otherwise well known to per- 
sons of influence. The above-mentioned negotiation belongs 
to the year 1464. Caxton began to print some ten years 
later, and laboured with great assiduity in his new employ- 
ment through the remaining twelve years of his life. The 
sort of books printed by Caxton merit consideration, as they 
indicate the taste and feeling of the time. The nature of 
the supply was no doubt determined by what was known 
to be the nature of the demand. Judging from these works, 
the spirit of the age embraced that mixture of the religious 
and the romantic which had been characteristic of the in- 
tellectual life of England for some centuries past. The 
same Caxton types were used to work off the Golden Le- 
gend, and King Arthur; a volume of Directions for Keep- 
ing Feasts all the Tear, and a Booh of the Order of Chiv- 
alry; the Life of St. Catherine of Sens, or of St. Wyne- 
frid, and the History of the Noble, Right Valiant, and 

* Rynier, ii. 379. 



550 



LAXCASTER AND YOEK. 



Probabili- 
ties of tho 
future. 



^ap. I' Ryffo WoHhy Knight of Paris amd his Fmr Vienna— 

coupled with the renowned tale of JSenord the Fox, or the 
Subtle Histories of the Fables of Esop. Such were the 
works Bent forth, in about equal proportions, by the infant 
press of England. But no writer profited more in reputa- 
tion by the new invention than our own Chaucer. One 
Thomas Hunt, and several foreigners, became known as 
printers in England before the death of Caxton.* 

Our literature, we have Been, was in a sorry state when 
the printing-press made its appearance among us; and the 
Bcience of the age was in the same low condition. Bnt the 
English constitution — and the English constitution as ex- 
pounded by Fortescu* — had been saved ; and the battle on 
the side of freedom of opinion had not come to a close. Tho 
aspects of this Btrugglehad been painfdlly fluctuating; but 
no thoughtful man can fail to see that the papal policy had 
long been losing ground in England, and that the history 
of England in this particular had become the history of 
Christendom. And now, with the magic agency of the 
press al its disposal, this new Bpirit might well be expected 
to achieve new victories. To judge wisely concerning the 
change which had come over the relations and position of 
the papacy, and concerning the prospect, in consequence, of 
the mind of society in the fifteenth century, it is important 
to look to the present in its relation to the past. 

Amidst the chaos which ensued od the fall of the Roman 
empire, the unity which characterized the papal system 
gave a wholesome tendency to its influence. Providence 
seems to have permitted it to grow strong, thai it might do 
the work which then needed to be done. It was by this 
influence that the Latin element left within the limits of the 
empire was preserved, and that the new elements were 
made to combine with it. The ecclesiastical power of Some 
came thus into the place of its old secular power, and na- 
tions ceded to it a universality which no other power could 
claim. "We have seen the deference shown to this authority 
by our rude ancestors before the Conquest ; and the same 
spirit is observable in France, Germany, and elsewhere. 



Historical 

function of 
tho papal 
power. 



* Kyuier, ii. 591. 'Caxton,' Biographia Brit. Caxton, a Biography. 



THE DAWN. 551 

But this interval, during which the adverse elements book y. 

° t m Chat. 2. 

were being brought more and more into combination, was 

not of long duration. The northern invaders, and the 
people they conquered, became one, and the new kingdoms 
they formed were soon separated from each other by differ- 
ences of language, and by much beside, which sufficed to 
give them their place as distinct nationalities. As these 
new states became consolidated, new feelings of nationality 
grew up, and the feeling thus called into existence at the 
extremities becoming stronger and stronger, it was inevita- 
ble that the supremacy exercised from the centre should be- 
come weaker and weaker. The ecclesiastical history of the 
Middle Age consists in the history of this growing inde- 
pendence on the part of the different nations on the one 
hand, and of this declining influence on the part of the 
pontiffs and their court on the other. The war is every- 
where a war between nationality and centralization. The 
papal power continued strong, and retained its universality, 
so long as that strength and that universality were needed ; 
it became weak, and was resisted, in the proportion in which 
nations became capable of dispensing with its services, by 
becoming more capable of self-defence and of self-govern- 
ment. The resistances to the papacy in England, through 
every reign after the Conquest, have their parallel in the 
history of all the contemporary states of Christendom. So 
far back must we go, if we would detect the beginnings of 
the struggle between Protestantism and Romanism, or, in 
other words, between freedom and authority. 

The disputes so long carried on in regard to investitures, Decline of 
had now ended in favour of the temporal power. Princes supremacy. 
are left to nominate, without disturbance, to the higher 
benefices of the church. Such is the tendency of affairs on 
all questions between the nationalities and the pontiffs. 
The papal schism has done its work. The councils of Pisa, 
and Constance, and Basle have laid bare the corruption of 
the existing system. By deposing or creating popes at 
pleasure, those reverend fathers have so lowered the papal 
authority as to render its future comparatively harmless. 
Pilgrimages, and other forms of popular superstition, con- 



552 LANCASTER AND YORK. 

B ca3 J' *i nue *° ^> e almost as prevalent as ever. But the spirit of 

the past is no longer in those customs. Europe is menaced, 

almost to its centre, by the Turks. The popes make the 
utmost effort to evoke another crusading enterprise against 
this formidable enemy. But nothing can be more signal 
than their failure. The danger is imminent, the pleas for 
action are most sacred ; but to call forth any combined or 
special movement is found to be impossible. The time, in- 
deed, seems to have arrived, in which change of some kind 
must come, if religious conviction is not to die out.* 
secularized But there is no prospect that any change for the better 
thVpontiffs. will be found to originate with the papacy. During the 
half-century preceding the age of Luther, it is manifest to 

* Of the pass to which affairs had conic between the national feeling of the 
time ami the papacy, we have sufficient evidence in the history of the famous 
prosmunire statute. This statute belongs to the reign of Richard II. It was 

aed to concentrate the essence of all previous statutes against the encroach- 
ments of tin' papacy, and to secure their Object by provisions of greater severity. 
In words are — ' Whereupon our said lord tin- king, by the assent aforesaid, and 

at the request of his said commons, hath ordained, and established, that if any 
purchase or pursue, or cause to !>•■ purchased or pursued, in the court of Rome 
or elsewhere, any such translations, processes, and sentences of excommunica- 
. bulls, instruments, or any other things whatsoever, which touch tin king, 
against him, hit I hit regality, <»■ hit realm, as is aforesaid, and they 

which bring within the realm, or they who receive or make thereof notification, 
or any other execution whatsoever, within the same realm, or without, that they, 
their notaries, procurators, maintainert, abettors, fautore, and councillors, shall 
beput out of tin- king's protection, taxi their lands and tenements, goods and 
chattels, forfeited to our lord the king: and that they be attached by their 
bodies, if they may be found, and brought before the king and his council, there 
to answer to the cases aforesaid, or that process be made against them by prae- 

tnunin facias, in manner as it is ordained in other statutes of provisors.' So 
effectual was this statute, in the altered spirit of the times, that the authority of 
the pontiffs was felt to he at an end in England, except as approved by the 
crown. In the time of Henry VI. pope Martin complained in the most bitter 
terms of this statute. Here is hi- language : ' By this execrable statute the king 
of England had so entirely usurped the spiritual jurisdiction, as if our Saviour 
had constituted him his Vicar. He makes laws for the church, and the order 
for the clergy ; draws the cognizance of ecclesiastical causes to temporal courts; 
makes provision about clerks, benefices, and the concerns of the hierarchy, as 
if he held the keys of the kingdom of heaven, as if the administration of those 
affairs were with the king, and not with St. Peter. Hcsidcs these hideous 
encroachments, he has enacted terrible penalties against the clergy. Jews and 
Saracens are not treated with so much severity. People of all persuasions, of 
all countries, have the liberty of coming to England — except those who have 
cures bestowed upon them by the supreme bishop, by the vicar of Jesus Christ. 
Those only are banished, arrested, imprisoned, stripped of their fortunes. Proc- 
tors, or notaries, charged with the mandates or censures of the apostolic see, if 
they venture to set foot on English ground, and proceed to the fulfilment of 
their commission, are treated as the king's enemies — cast out of the king's pro- 
tection. Is this a Catholic kingdom ?' — Collier, i. 596, 597. Raynaldus, ad an. 
1426. Milman vi. 76. So did affairs ripen in the fifteenth century towards their 
issue in the sixteenth. 



Chap. 2. 



THE DAWN. 553 

all men that the spiritual power of the popes has almost b °ok v. 
ceased to exist. None are more sensible of this fact than 
the popes themselves. Sixtns IV., Alexander YL, and 
Julius II. are all popes of this interval. Their power as the 
spiritual fathers of Christendom being so small, it becomes 
their policy to improve their position as Italian princes, by 
every possible expedient. How to manage affairs so as to 
ensure status and wealth to their respective families, in the 
manner of the successful ruling families of Italy, is the 
question which occupies the whole life of the first and second 
of the pontiffs above named. All Italy knows this to be 
the guiding thought of those spiritual chiefs, and, what is 
worse, has come to look upon it as a natural course of 
things, and deals with it accordingly. The aim of Sixtus 
IY. is to make his nephew Eiario the chief of a great 
house ; and he succeeds in raising him to the lordship of 
Imola and Forli. But to achieve this object, his holiness 
commits himself to so much perfidious intrigue and blood- 
shed, in Florence, in Yenice, and in other places, as to be- 
come associated with execrable memories in the thoughts 
of all men. His successor pursues the same policy with 
still greater eagerness, with less scruple, and with more 
success. Alexander YI. has sons, openly acknowledged. 
How best to surround himself, even in old age, with every 
imaginable means of indulgence, and how best to confer 
position and wealth on his children, are the ends towards 
which all his thoughts are directed. One of his sons is the 
infamous Csesar Borgia — a man who realizes our concep- 
tion of a Satanic incarnation more fully perhaps than any 
man in history. His person exhibits an extraordinary com- 
bination of the powerful and the beautiful — the strength of 
Hercules with the grace of Apollo. The horrible in his 
crimes is only equalled by the subtlety with which he pro- 
ceeds to the perpetration of them. He is voluptuous, can 
be liberal, even magnanimous ; but it is his passion to clear 
his way to his object through every sort of impediment, and 
to bring, if we may so express it, an artistic genius to such 
performances, which is known to have been especially inter- 
esting to him, and which distanced all vulgar delinquents 



554 



LANCASTER AST) YORK. 



BOOK V. 
Chap. 2. 



Corruption 
nt the head 
common t«< 

the in. 'ln- 



hopelessly. Tt is true, Caesar Borgia is not a pope. But 
he is the son of a pope; and the city, and the very cham- 
bers, of the man holding that most sacred office, are the 
chosen scenes of his enormities. 

Julius II. differs from his predecessor, inasmuch as his 
object is not to aggrandize a family, but to enlarge and 
consolidate the temporal power of his Bee, and to accomplish 
this end, he does not depend mainly on intrigue or secret 
crime, but appeals openly to arms. His advanced age, 
with strength impaired by debauchery and intemperance, 
does not prevent his so ruling, and so waging war, as to 
augment the dominions of the church beyond all precedent. 
Great kings learn to respeel his power. But the very fact 
that a pope of Buch genius and energy can Bee no way to 
greatness except by descending into the worldly arena, and 
doing battle there as a secular prince, suggests how feeble, 
and comparatively profitless, the spiritual branch of the 
Roman pontificate mus1 have become It is true, individ- 
uals dt' eminent piety, mid members of princely and papal 
families, Buch as the Borromeos of Lombardy and the 
Oolonnas of Rome, were to he found even in Italy. But 
they were rare exceptions to their order, and lights which 
only served to make the surrounding darkness more risible 

and ominous. There were men of this description in the 

councils of Constance and Basle, who raised their voice hon- 
estly and devoutly on the Bide of reform ; but the strength 
of the resistance called forth, presented only a new mani- 
festation, both of the breadth and the depth of the feeling 
: to all change in favour of a purer state of things. 

What the heads of the ecclesiastical system are during 
this half century, the system itself in the main has become. 
The maxims and conduct of the highest have descended to 

the lowest. It was inseparable from so much ecclesiastical 

wealth, that churchmen should often be sordid and worldly. 
But the church in those days had become, in a degree hith- 
erto unknown, a mart in which money commands every- 
thing, and in which the science of intrigue is the next power 
to wealth. The men who secure the coveted preferments 
by such means, contrive to assign the duties of them to sub- 



the dawn. 555 

ordinates, prepared to render service on the lowest terms. In book v - 

this manner, they have become possessed of the largest possi- 

ble revenue, on the easiest possible conditions. This revenue, 
it should be remembered, comes not simply, or even mainly, 
from the land. Every priestly service is a commodity for 
which a price is to be paid. Marriages, christenings, burials, 
absolutions, indulgences, and the like, are all matters of fis- 
cal arrangement. By the customs and tariffs so established, 
and which are virtually farmed by the inferior clergy from 
their superiors, the rapacity of the order is made to enter 
the homes of the poorest, and to be felt there with a con- 
stancy which scarcely seems to know intermission. Some 
there are who see these evils, and bitterly deplore them. 
We find such men among our own national clergy, and they 
may be found more or less everywhere. But the tide is too 
strong to be stayed by such resistance. "War has been 
waged for centuries to preclude the popes from assigning 
the bishoprics and the richer livings of the national churches 
to their proteges^ and it has been waged with success. But 
the princes, the great families, and the lay patrons gene- 
rally, are fully as unfaithful to their trust as the court of 
Borne had been. They do not bestow their patronage so fre- 
quently on foreigners, but they bestow it quite as frequently 
upon the incompetent and the worthless. Such gifts are 
generally regarded as matters to be disposed of through 
family influence, favouritism, or a consideration.* 

Side by side with this decay of everything ecclesiastical Revival of 
and religious, comes the revival of classical literature and and art. 
of ancient art. This tendency in the intelligence and taste 
of the states of Europe may be traced far back into the Mid- 
dle Age. But in the fifteenth century, the advance of the 
Turks towards Constantinople, and the ultimate fall of 
that capital, made both the genius, and the vast literary 
treasures, of the East, the possession of the West, The 
cities of Italy became the special home of the Greek fugi- 
tives, and the depositories of those remains of ancient learn- 
ing which they were careful to carry with them. Nicolas 

* Ranke's History of the Popes, Introd. Roscoe's Pontificate of Leo X. 
Life of Lorenzo de 1 Medici. 



556 LANCASTER AND YORK. 

B ca3 J' ^"' became pontiff in 1449. He lived in the midst of these 

memorable events. As plain Thonicas of Sarzana, he had 

long been a passionate collector of books and manuscripts, 
and of such remains of classic art as his means could pro- 
cure, or which he could induce the more wealthy to pur- 
chase. Nicolas was persuaded that it became the spiritual 
head of Christendom to secure to the papacy all the advan- 
tage that might be derived from a patronage of this move- 
ment ; and if the policy of such a course had been less ob- 
vious, his inclination would have prompted him strongly 
towards it. When Cosmo de' Medici decided on forming 
the library of St. Marco in Florence, Thomas of Sarzana was 
the person to whom he looked as most competent to classify 
the books, and to prepare the catalogue. That library be- 
came the model of many formed by other hands in different 
parts of Italy, and especially of the library of the Vatican, 
which owed its origin to his own zeal and munificence as 
Nicolas Y. The five thousand volumes included in the 
Vatican collection in his time were Bpoken of as the wonder 
of the age. Nothing like it had been seen in the West since 
the fall of the Roman empire. 

Scholars from all parts were now attracted to Rome, 
and all found there both genial and highly lucrative employ- 
ment. The Latin and Greek classics, the Greek Fathers, 
and the sacred Scriptures both in Greek and Hebrew, were 
transcribed, collated, and annotated, on a Bcale which reads 
more like fable than like history. Architecture, and all the 
arts tributary to it, received the same surprising impulse. 
Fortifications, churches, palaces, streets, all bore witness to 
the change which was to mark this epoch in the history of 
the Eternal City ; and now it was decreed that the modern 
St. Peter's should come into the place of the edifice which 
had so long stood on that site. N icolas was the sovereign of 
the Papal States, and in his hands the exercise of that power 
was wise and benignant. But he never forgot that his high- 
est rank was that of sovereign pontiff; and by all this en- 
couragement given to learning and art, he hoped to throw 
around the papal power a new dignity and prestige, such as 
should compensate in some measure for the influence it 



THE DAWN. 557 

had lost. His successors, indeed, did not emulate his worth, book v. 

Chap. 2. 



In them, there was more of the secular prince than of the 
chief pastor. Religion had little place in their thoughts. 
But the revival of letters had come from too many causes, 
and drew towards itself too wide a sympathy, to be depend- 
ent on the accidents of character in the ruling pontiffs. The 
feeling which had thus grown up in Rome, had grown up in 
all the States of Italy. Everywhere scholars gave their 
days and nights to the new studies. Every home of the 
wealthy became a place of meeting for such men, where they 
compared acquisitions, exchanged criticisms, and struck out 
plans for the future. 

Leo X. was a man of his time. The most prominent i- e ° x - 
elements in Italian life were embodied in his character. He 
was a decorous pontiff, if compared with his immediate pre- 
decessors. But he, too, was much more prince than bishop. 
His canonical habits did not sit naturally upon him. He 
dispensed with them whenever it was practicable. In the 
autumn, he always made his escape from Rome, and fished, 
and hunted, and hawked with the gayest. Accomplished 
men, who could give vivacity to his table, and to every- 
thing about him, were always near his person. In Rome, 
during the winter, the most solemn festivals of the church 
were interspersed with the most imposing theatrical per- 
formances. In short, the court of Leo X. became very much 
what the court of Versailles was to become two centuries 
later. Nations may be awed for awhile by such splendour ; 
and men full of their worldly wisdom learnt to persuade 
themselves that the empire of the church might be served 
by such means. They do not seem to have suspected that 
a state of things so opposed to all that we know of primi- 
tive Christianity might provoke dangerous comparisons ; or 
that the intellectual movement which had called forth mul- 
titudes of men prepared to work for hire, might send forth 
men constrained to labour in the higher departments of in- 
telligence from the highest motives. 

Such results were the more probable, from the fact that Sceptici 

• - -i • 1 • -it i > n Italy in 

the spirit which pervaded this revived literature and art the fifteenth 

. i-r-r century. 

proved to be essentially a pagan spirit. When we come to 



558 LANCASTER AND YORK. 

book v. the opening of the sixteenth century, the great mission of 

the sculptor and of the artist seems to be, to thrust the gods 

and goddesses of the old heathenism into the place which 
had been filled by the saint and the martyr. In the strug- 
gle which ensues, the pagan spirit is found to he greatly 
stronger than the Christian spirit, especially in the case of 
the more educated. Multitudes, not a few of whom are 
ecclesiastics, do not scruple to avow that they are content 
to derive their notions of religion from the source which has 
given them their models of taste. Through the half cen- 
tury which precedes the elevation <>f Leo X., the profession- 
alism of the church of Rome is, in the case of many, only 
a thin covering laid over the most materialized scepticism. 
Priests ran mingle blasphemous jests with their religions 
services. Men pledged to uphold the Christian religion, can 
discourse in college-, and reason in private, to show that the 
soul is not immortal, that there is nothing in it to ensure to 
it a higher destiny than belongs to the instinct of the brute. 
In fact, the man i< accounted as one loitering behind the 
age, who doe- not indulge in BOme such talk. 'On his 
death-bed Oosmo de' Medici is attended by Ficinus, who 
assures him of another lite on the authority of Socrates, and 
teaches him resignation in the words of 1'lato, Xenocrates, 
and other Athenian sages.''* 

Such is the decay of faith which comes along with a 
theopening general corruption of manners, in the quarter where faith in 
teentbeen- the divine origin of Christianity should be the strongest, 
and the sanctity proper to the Christian profession the most 
above suspicion. And we have now to remember that the 
intelligence of the age is showing itself to be an irrepressible 
and constantly expanding intelligence; that the revival of 
literary criticism, and of art criticism, is of necessity insep- 
arable from a revival of criticism on questions of morals and 
religion; that in Bohemia, in Germany, and in England — 
the great homes of the Teutonic race — there is no sign of 
religious scepticism, but much evidence of deep religious 
earnestness ; that in the countries of these peoples, the 

* Milman, vi. 438. Roscoe's Pontificate of Leo X. Life of Lorenzo de' 

Jfaiici. 



THE DAWN. 559 

vernacular language has become so formed, as to ensure that B00K v - 
there will soon be, not only a powerful literature, but a — - 
Bible in those languages' ; that for centuries, the national 
feeling, in all these communities, has been growing strong- 
er, while reverence for the papacy — a power ab extra to the 
nation — has been ceasing more and more to be what it once 
was. At this same juncture, too, which witnesses the suc- 
cessful use of the printing-press, comes the matured manufac- 
ture of paper. All these facts combine to say, that the curb 
which has been laid on the papal power in the past, weighty 
as it may have been, is light compared with that which 
awaits it ; and that a system which has long been felt as 
the great hindrance, not only to religion and virtue, but to 
national independence, and to social progress generally, is 
about to disappear, or to be shut up to limits that will be 
new in its history. A believing Christendom, subject to an 
infidel popedom, is a posture of affairs that can hardly be 
of long continuance. 

When we look, indeed, to the vast numbers of the clergy, 
including all the religious orders ; to the immense wealth 
— nearly half the wealth of Europe — that has passed into 
their hands ; to the prejudice and interest which must dis- 
pose such men to resist innovation ; to the many influences 
for good, as well as for evil, which have had a place in their 
history ; and to the natural slowness of mankind in seeing 
their way to the wisdom of any great change in regard to 
religion — it must be confessed that the revolution in the 
affairs of Europe which seems to be inevitable, is one the 
course and issues of which no man of that age could have 
ventured to predict.* Spain is not yet free from her domes- 
tic foe, the Moslem, but her share in the coming struggle 
will not be small. Austria may be expected to take her 
place by the side of Italy. France may act more independ- 

* The anticipation of our own Wycliffe on this subject should be cited. 
Looking to the future, while writing his Trialogus, he says, ' I imagine that some 
fraternity, whom God shall vouchsafe to teach, will be devoutly converted to the 
primitive religion of Christ ; and, abandoning their false interpretations of gen- 
uine Christianity, after having claimed, or extorted liberty for themselves from 
Antichrist, will freely return to the religion of Christ as it was at first, and then, 
they will build up the church like Paul.' — Neander's Reformation Movements in 
England. Had Luther or Melancthon seen this prophecy, they might have had 
a good word for this great Englishman. 



560 



LANCASTER AND YOKK. 



BOOK V. 
Chap. 2. 



Richard 
III. 



Accession 
of the houso 
of Tudor. 



cntly. But it is evidently with the Teutons of Germany, 
England, the Xetherlands, and the North, that the repre- 
sentatives of the old Latin empire will have to settle the 
great controversy which must soon arise. 

By the close of the reign of Henry VII., Providence had 
done much to prepare England for the part she was to take 
in the new world about to open upon us. Two short years 
sufficed for the reign of Richard III. Sovereignty so ac- 
quired could not be of long duration. Whether from vanity 
or from penitence, Richard seemed disposed to exercise his 
authority, in the main, considerately and wisely. But men 
never saw him. rarely heard his name, without some re- 
membrance of the judicial murders which had removed 
Rivera, Grey, and others, from his path; nor, above all, 
without that Tower scene, which disposed of his nephews, 
being shadowed in some form in the distance. The country 
hail been greatly demoralized by war— by civil war; but 
the crimes of Richard III. were among the foulesl deeds of 
those had time-, and it was felt to ho natural and fitting 

that such a man should reap &S he had sown. \\ 'hat the 

course of Richard would have boon towards the church is 
uncertain. He .-aid .-on,,, flattering things to the clergy, 
and the clergy descended to flatter him in return ; * but 
we may be sure thai his ultimate policy would have been 
determined, had his reign boon prolonged, by his vanity or 
his convenience, much more than by any graver considera- 
tion. The probability is, that he would have deemed the 
good offices of churchmen of too much importance to bis in- 
terests to be dispensed with. Complaints against ecclesias- 
tics might be heard everywhere : but the \ iews of the men 
who uttered them had not become sufficiently enlightened 
or defined, to justify a king in courting their friendship, at 
the cost of incurring the enmity of men, who, in a sense, 
had all the parishes of England in their keeping.f 

On the death of Henry V., his widow, a native of France, 
became the wife of Owen Tudor, a gentleman of her house- 

* Wilkin?, Concilia, v. 614. 

f Sir Thomas Morc's Lift "»</ /.'' ign of Ridiard III. Life and Reign 
of Richard III., by George Buck, Esq. 'Hall's Chronicle, 342-421. IIol- 
linshed. 



THE DAWN. 561 

hold, and a native of "Wales. Tudor had three sons by this book v. 
marriage, one of "whom died early, but became father of 
'Henry, earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry YII. Rich- 
mond had been introduced to Henry YI. when a boy, and 
the good king is said to have predicted his probable acces- 
sion to the English throne. "When the battle of Tewkes- 
bury destroyed the last hope of the Lancastrians, Richmond 
was fifteen years of age. It was deemed wise to remove 
him from the kingdom ; and from that time until his land- 
ing to oppose himself to Richard HI. he had been resident 
in Bretagne. The paternal relationship of Richmond, and 
his being so little known in this country, were not circum- 
stances in his favour. But the men opposed to Richard 
were bent upon displacing him, and there was no other 
quarter to which they could look with the same prospect of 
success. They were men, moreover, who had learnt to ac- 
count it an advantage that the king should not be allowed 
to feel himself so strong as to be tempted to assume inde- 
pendence of his nobles. This notion, we have seen, had 
been the source of incalculable mischief in English history 
during the last hundred years. But it had now pretty 
nearly clone its work. Henry YII. suffered from it. He 
lived, however, to frustrate one conspiracy after another ; 
and putting down, with a strong hand, that liveried and 
armed following of the nobility, which had served to make 
them all so many petty kings, he left the English throne in 
a much more stable condition than he found it. 

Henrv's marriage with Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Kuie of 

J ° i i -i i • i Henry VII. 

Edward IY., no doubt contributed largely to this result. 
The conflicting claims of York and Lancaster were thus har- 
monized in his person. But even this event might not have 
sufficed to ensure tranquillity, apart from the general cau- 
tion and ability of his rule. He is justly described as a 
great lover of money. It is manifest that he was more dis- 
posed to levy fines upon delinquents than to send them to 
the scaffold. But this was in pursuance of his general 
policy. Though not wanting in courage himself, he did his 
utmost to discountenance violence and bloodshed. He in- 
curred large expense that his subjects might be gratified in 
36 



562 LANCASTER AND YOKE. 

booe v. witnessing the show and pomp of war. This was all done, 

however, in the hope of weaning them from the reality, and 

eventually from the military passion altogether. On his 
accession, England had long been in danger of becoming 
another Poland. It seemed as though Englishmen could 
settle nothing without arms in their hands. All the higher 
interests of civilization were thus in peril. The reign of 
Henry VII., accordingly, forms an epoch in our history. 
From that time the old feudal baron is no more. The 
modern nobleman is about to come into his place. Rank is 
to possess its prestige ; wealth is to retain its influence ; but 
intelligence is henceforth to be the great power in national 
affairs.* 
urocele- I 11 regard to religion, the policy of Henry VII. was 

policy! 11 such, on the whole, as might have been expected from a 
sovereign whose habits were all so strictly conservative. 
He Btistained the checks which had been opposed to the 
pretension- of the papacy by the statute of his predecessors. 
But he was careful to guard against disagreement in that 
quarter. Nor did he show any disposition to encourage 
the party who would willingly have made sonic inroad on 
the enormous wealth of the national church. In ecclesiasti- 
cal affairs, his great merit was, that he did much to enforce 
greater purity and consistency of living among the clergy ; 
and his great fault was, that he allowed that class of men, 
scandalous as their lives often were, to renew the persecu- 
tions of former years, and was himself at times a party to 
such proceedings. During the civil wars, so great were the 
disorders of the times, that considerable latitude seems to 
have been allowed to the expression of opinion. But such 
license was now at an end. In the reign of Henry VII., 
many persons were burnt as having embraced the doctrines 
of "Wycliffe ; and great numbers in London, Amersham, 
Coventry, and other places, were made to do public pen- 
ance as the punishment of errors of that nature attributed 
to them. Twenty thousand people were sometimes present 
at scenes of this description ; and the night after the mar- 

* Bacon's Henry VII. Hall, 422 ct seq. 



THE DAWN. 563 



tyrdom of a woman much stricken in years, named Joan B c °^ I 
Boughton, < the most part of her ashes ' is said to have 
been borne away from Smithfield, by those who ' had a love 
unto the doctrine she died for.'* The Lollards might well 
be without any great affection for the memory of Henry 
VH. But they showed no sign of disloyalty in his time. 
They left that to the clergy and the religious orders, some 
of whom were concerned in every imposture and conspira- 
cy directed against him. Henry punished treason in the 
priest with imprisonment ; for heresy in the laity, whether 
in man or woman, he allowed a heavier penalty to be in- 
flicted. But to Henry VII., with all his defects and faults, 
both as a man and a king, England owed no small debt of 
gratitude. His firm and sagacious policy sufficed to smooth 
the way for the great transition from the mediaeval to the 
modern in English history. And with this great change in 
favour of law, order, and comparative refinement, came 
the seeds of change in much besidc.f 

* Foxe bk. t. Wilkins, Concilia, ill- 616 et seq. Fabian, 529-535. 
+ Some thirty years ago, the Paston Letters were almost our only documents 
throwing any considerable and direct light on the domestic life of our ancestors 
mTe fifteenth century. Since then, the different associations ^publishing 
ancent writings, the Camden Society, Cheetham Society, Roxborough Club, &c 
h"ve add^d somewhat to our means of knowledge on this subject. It is eviden 
from such souTes, that the middle and the gentry class of that age were in general 
firm Severs in the authority assumed by the priest over the souls of the hving 
and the dead hough, from many causes, their relation to the priest was by no 
means an abject relation. Children were trained to great reverence for their 
mSs Jenerd y addressing their father as ' worshipful ;' and wives were won 
fo be ver g y reverential towards their husbands. Parents did not leave the moral 
and reliSous education of their children wholly to others It were better they 
somet mes said, to see them buried than to see them dishonoured. Self-reliant 
Z honest industry was of great price. That habit, indeed, seemed to be 
i,r t o he mSs of the people in town and country. In marriages, affection 
no doubt "had L itorface, but in general a keen eye is directed towards property. 
The ^ve of horn? comfort is evidently great, and men and women seem pre- 
micd by activity and forethought, to do their best to ensure the means : of such 
comfor The election of a member of parliament has come to be often an 
exdtin^' scene- but the animosities of the civil wars affect the upper c asses 
much mow deeply and permanently than the middle or the lower. Lawsuits are 
Xundant thougVit is "believed th'at judges are not always P£^^£ 
often known to be bought. Organization is appreciated. Energy to act witn 
ou it i s no?w£iting. So some of the germs of the present may be seen in the 
past In Engknt S even in the worst times, the industrial power of the people 
seems destined to be strong. 



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CONTENTS- 

I. Cent. — The Bad Emperors. — II. The Good Emperors. — III. Anarchy and Con- 
fusion. — Growth of the Christian Church.— IV. The Removal to Constantinople. — Estab- 
Ushment of Christianity. — Apostasy of Julian. — Settlement of the Goths. — V. End of 
the Roman Empire. — Formation of Modern States. — Growth of Ecclesiastical Authority. 
— VI. Belisarius and Xarses in Italy. — Settlement of the Lombards. — Laws of Justinian. 
— Birth of Mohammed. — VII. Power of Rome supported by the Monks. — Conquests of 
the Mohammedans. — VIII. Temporal Power of the Popes. — The Empire of Charlemagne. 
— IX. Dismemberment of Charlemagne's Empire. — Danish Invasion of England. — Weak- 
ness of France. — Reign of Alfred. — X. Darkness and Despair. — XL The Commencement 
of Improvement. — Gregory the Seventh. — First Crusade. — XII. Elevation of Learning. — 
Power of the Church. — Thomas a Beckct. — XIII. First Crusade against Heretics. — The 
Albigenses. — Magna Charta. — Edward I. — XIV. Abolition of the Order of Templars. — 
Rise of Modern Literature. — Schism of the Church.— XV. Decline of Feudalism. — Agin- 
court.7- Joan of Arc. — The Printing Press.— Discovery of America. — XVI. The Reforma- 
tion. — The Jesuits. — Policy of Elizabeth. — XVII. English Rebellion and Revolution. — 
Despotism of Louis the Fourteenth. — XVIII. India. — America. — France. — Index. 



Opinions of the Press. 

Mr. "White possesses in a high degree the power of epitomizing — that faculty which 
enables him to distil the essence from a mass of facts, and to condense it in description ; 
a battle, siege, or other remarkable event, which, without his skill, might occupy a 
chapter, is compressed within the compass of a page or two, and this without the sacri- 
fice of any feature essential or significant. — Century. 

Mr. White has been very happy in touching upon the salient points in the history 
of each century of the Christian era, and yet has avoided making his work a mere bald 
analysis or chronological table. — Providence Journal. 

In no single volume of English literature can so satisfying and clear an idea of the 
historical character of these eighteen centuries be obtained. — Home Journal. 

In this volume we have the best epitome of Christian History extant. This is high 
praise, but at the same time it is just. The author's peculiar success is in making the 
great points and facts of history stand out in sharp relief. His style may be said to be 
stereoscopic, and the effect is exceedingly impressive. — Providence Press. 



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